Behind the scenes – how the ideal jury is assembled

In just five years, the Winelovers Wine Award has become a leading international wine competition not only in Hungary but throughout Central and Eastern Europe. One of the secrets to this success is undoubtedly the jury itself, comprised of carefully selected international and Hungarian experts. Now we’ll reveal a few behind-the-scenes secrets about how we managed to assemble another stellar jury!
 

The field is competitive in the realm of international wine competitions, yet it’s rare to find one like the Winelovers Wine Awards, where every jury member is listed with their name, photo, and description—even before the competition begins. Of course, it’s not easy to get all this information from busy professionals, but we put in the effort, and the result is right here:
wineloverswineawards.com/jury
 
The "headhunting" begins a year in advance

As soon as the wine competition ends, the organizers discuss the lessons learned and immediately begin planning the next competition. The calendars of truly serious professionals fill up quickly, so sending invitations in a timely manner is crucial. There are some we’ve already invited for the 2027 competition because we’d very much like to have them on our jury, but the 2026 date didn’t work for them. 
 
Repeated invitations would be too easy

It would be easy to simply repeat the invitation, since anyone who has visited us before and had a good time is happy to come back, but our goal is not to provide a pleasant vacation for a select few, but to bring as many opinion-forming professionals as possible to us, so they can get to know not only Hungarian wines but also those of neighbouring wine-producing countries.
 
Importers, sommeliers, wine writers, educators

Our guiding principle is that the majority of invitees should have “buying potential,” meaning we aim to provide as many genuinely valuable guests as possible for the participating wineries, Winelovers X exhibitors, and Meet the Buyer participants. We invite back those merchants who actually conducted business after the previous event—that is, who placed orders for the wines presented.
This year, thanks to our collaboration with the Hungarian Sommelier Club, we will also have several highly knowledgeable sommeliers working at excellent restaurants serving as jury members, which we are very pleased about, since it is the sommelier who actually sells the wine at the restaurant. Not everyone knows that a sommelier doesn’t just talk about wine, pull corks, and decant—they’re also responsible for a successful and profitable wine selection.
And of course, let’s not forget the wine writers, influencers, and wine school instructors; thanks to them, individual wines and wineries become “visible” to a wider audience, and they are just as essential—including on the judging panel.

How is the ideal judging panel formed?

According to László Bálint, the wine competition’s president, the ideal number of judges at a table is 3–5 people, which is why most tables this year will have four judges. The president believes that a larger panel is not ideal because, with more judges, the average score is more likely to be mediocre.
The heads of each table are always experts who have judged with us before; they know the judging process and serve as our “benchmarks.” Aside from them, each panel is diverse, and László Bálint ensures that every panel includes a merchant, a sommelier, and a wine writer/educator. Of course, he also takes into account whether someone has a specific area of expertise.
How about winemakers? Well, we consciously avoid having winemakers in the jury, on one hand to avoid jury members with the so-called "cellar blindness" (several winemakers are less experienced of wines outside their own wine regions), and on the other hand we prefer to have jury members with buying potential, as said before.
 
From the East, the West, and across the seas

When selecting international experts, we also consider which markets are important for the region’s wines, which is why we have merchants from Switzerland (as we previously wrote about here), Poland, and the United Kingdom, considered the centre of the European wine market. To our great delight, we manage to invite guests from overseas every year; we’ve had jury members from Taiwan, the U.S., and Chile, and this year we have them from the U.S. and Japan as well.
 
Browse our jury here!