The 2021 award season continues, and we’re excited to tell you all about our results from the 2021 Alberta Beverage Awards.

About the Competition

Culinaire Magazine has been running the Alberta Beverage Awards since 2013. It is a competition to judge the very diverse beverage market in Alberta, and as a result, they pull experts from every corner of that beverage market to judge through blind taste testing. We say diverse because their competition judges far more than just wine. In fact, the categories range from wines, of course, to beers, ciders, meads, sakes, spirits, liqueurs, and everything in between. There’s even a non-alcoholic category.

The Awards

Every wine competition has its own quirks, and the ABAs are no exception. For each category, the judges give out 1 award for “Best in Class,” which is their version of 1st place. They also give out anywhere from 1 to several “Judges’ Selection” awards to beverages that the judges feel deserve a shout out for being generally awesome. Sometimes there’s even a “Top Value” award for a beverage that the judges believe has the best value for its price range.

2021 Alberta Beverage Awards Medals
The Results

2021 was the ninth Alberta Beverage Awards, and it was the ABAs’ biggest year to date. With so much stiff competition, we are proud to announce that we’ve won three awards!

Here are the results:

  • In the “Fruit Wines” category, we won “Best in Class” for our Blueberry wine.
  • In the Red Blends category, we won “Judges’ Selection” for our 2019 Hands Up Red.
  • In the Red Single Varieties category, we won “Judges’ Selection” for our (not yet available) 2019 Foch.
More About Winning and Wine

The winners for all of the categories will be announced by Culinaire in their October issue and on their website, so keep an eye out for us and your other favourites in the results.

To learn about other wine competitions that we’ve gotten awards from this year, check out our blog posts for the 2021 Decanter World Wine Awards and  2021 All Canadian Wine Competition.