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For the world’s leading wine producers, cork occupies pride of place as their preferred wine closure, as confirmed by the results of the world’s top wine competitions.

In the world’s biggest and most prestigious wine competition, the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, sponsored by Amorim since its inception, cork-sealed wines swept over 95% of the top awards.

In terms of Grand Gold medals, French wines topped of the list, followed by Spanish and Portuguese wines, in 2nd and 3rd place. The host country China won five Grand Gold medals, compared to four in 2017, and just one in 2016. Cork was used in virtually all the award-winning wines.

CMB is the only touring competition in the world, with 25 years’ experience, and is the only wine contest to perform quality control tests on the awarded wines. In the overwhelming majority of cases this means having to pull a wine cork, rather than opening an artificial closure.

Cork is also consolidating its status as the premium seal for spirits producers, as part of the powerful global premiumisation trend.

Cork-sealed whiskies and gins took pride of place in the 2018 World Whiskies Awards and 2018 World Gin Awards - both sponsored by Amorim Top Series.

Cork is viewed by consumers as a sign of quality and this is confirmed by the results in the world’s leading wine and spirits awards. In short - nothing can beat cork to keep the genie in the bottle!