Advanced Wine Assessment Course

Founded in 1992, the Advanced Wine Assessment Course (AWAC) is an intensive four-day course designed for participants with considerable formal wine tasting experience. It aims to prepare potential new wine show judges and develop the sensory analysis capabilities and the vocabulary of Australian wine industry personnel at an elite level. In 2019 the AWRI presented its 50th AWAC.

The AWAC is presented under a four-day format, which includes approximately 40 hours of activities over four days. Twelve leading wine show judges, journalists and winemakers assist in the presentation of the course.

The aims of the course include:

  • providing training in the techniques and practices of wine show judging
  • investigating and challenging the criteria on which tasters make decisions on wine quality and preference
  • improving participants’ ability to communicate clearly and effectively with other judges and to justify their reasoning for allocating wines at different quality levels
  • improving participants’ appreciation and recognition of different wine styles, blends or regional character
  • providing a statistical evaluation of tasting performance with respect to:
    • discrimination – the degree to which wines of different quality levels are separated based on quality score
    • reliability – a measure of scoring consistency, or the ability of a judge to reproduce results on different tasting occasions
    • absolute average difference – a more straightforward measure of consistency – the average difference between scores given to wines on repeat tastings
    • stability – a measure of propensity to systematically score wines higher or lower on the second tasting relative to the first

COVID-19
To ensure the safety of all participants, additional spacing and hygiene measures will be put in place to comply with government health guidelines and social distancing requirements. Additional information on hygiene requirements for wine judging and tasting processes can be found in the ASVO Wine Show Best Practice Recommendations Addendum 1 (2020).

Next course dates

AWAC 59: Monday 6 – Thursday 9 May 2024

AWAC 60: Monday 13 – Thursday 16 May 2024

All Advanced Wine Assessment Courses are held in person at the Australian Wine Research Institute, Adelaide, South Australia

Registration for the AWAC:

By completing this application, you will automatically be entered into the ballot for any AWAC courses.

Register here.

Course fees

$5,390 (AUD) including GST

Due to the extensive list of people interested in participating in the course, and if demand exceeds the number of available places, an allocation of places will be made using a ballot system. By registering yourself for the Advanced Wine Assessment course, you will automatically be entered into the ballot for any AWAC courses held. The AWRI does, however, reserve the right not to place applicants if it is considered they do not have sufficient formal wine tasting experience to enable them to participate fully in the course.

More

How to become a wine show judge

Dental health for wine tasters

Contact details

The AWRI also offers themed tasting courses. Visit the AWRI events calendar for a full listing of upcoming events or contact the AWRI Events Team
Email: events@awri.com.au
Phone: (08) 8313 6600

AWAC SCHOLARS and JUDGES