Wine and brandy specialist Bodegas Torres has been awarded gold medals for four of its wines at the Mundus Vini International Wine Award 2014, held in Neustadt, Germany. The winning wines were Mas La Plana 2010, Grans Muralles 2010, Salmos 2011, and Perpetual 2011.
The International Wine Award, organised by publisher Meininger Verlag, is one of the world’s leading wine competitions and aims to promote and increase the visibility of quality wines from around the world.
This year’s competition, which opened in early September, received entries from 4,500 wines from around the world. The wines were judged by an international panel of 164 people.
Mas La Plana 2010, the 40th vintage of the Cabernet Sauvignon, became the first Spanish wine to win an international competition in 1979 at the Wine Olympics, in Paris.
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Triumphant: Torres competed against 4,500 other wines |
Grans Muralles is the result of a project that Bodegas Torres initiated 30 years ago to revive ancestral Catalan varieties. The 2010 vintage includes two recovered varieties – Garró and Querol – combined with red Garnacha, Mazuelo and Monastrell, said to give the wine its own distinctive and recognisable personality.
Salmos and Perpetual originate in slate soils, particular to the Priorat wine region, which are said to give the wine its unique characteristics.
Salmos is a blend of Cariñena, red Garnacha and Syrah, while Perpetual is made from Cariñena and Garnacha grapes from 80 to 100 year-old vines.
At last month’s TFWA World Exhibition, Torres served 2009 vintages of winning wines Mas La Plana and Gran Muralles to guests at its dinner event. Welcoming guests was Torres Director General Miguel Torres, who reported that the company has experienced +17% growth in global travel retail this year.
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Dinner guests sampled a number of Torres wines including Mas La Plana and Grans Muralles |
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Miguel Torres said the company has seen +17% growth this year in global travel retail |
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Interactive experience: Guests take a flight over Torres’s vineyards |
Taking place on Monday 27 October, the dinner offered guests the opportunity to take part in a 3D audiovisual experience via a device inspired by Google Cardboard.
The device enabled participants to “˜fly’ over Torres’s wineries and vineyards in Spain with an aerial perspective. The video contained aerial images of Torres’s estates and vineyards that were recorded by a drone and six GoPro cameras in a spherical formation.
Torres said it will use the device at future events and fairs, enabling customers to see where the wines they taste are produced.
In other news, the Torres Foundation has donated €275,000 (US$350,000) towards the construction of a new refuge home for neglected girls and those at risk in Guadalajara, Mexico. Managed by non-profit organisation Casa Hogar Alegria, the project aims to provide shelter and comprehensive training for 50 children to help their social integration and employment in the future.
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Rodolfo González, Eduardo Rodríguez, Miguel Torres and Jaime Cristo toast the new project |
The managing partners of La Negrita, Torres’s distributor in Mexico, namely Rodolfo González, Guadalupe Carmona, Eduardo Rodríguez and Jaime Cristo also contributed financially to the project.
Miguel Torres laid the foundation stone for the new centre last week at an event attended by local authorities, project supporters and journalists.
The charity already has two other shelter houses in the city of Toluca.
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