Chardonnay

There’s something I quite like about the Vivino Wine Style Awards, and that is that the winning wines are entirely selected by consumers. Based on the reviews of 35 million users (although some are undeniably more prolific than others!) each year the Vivino tech team take a look at the reviews and ratings of all the wines on the app and tot up the scores to see which wines in which categories came out on top. This includes several categories for the best wines in South America.

This is the fifth year of Vivino’s awards and, as the most-downloaded wine app in the world, it takes into account 120 million ratings. Anyone can add their rating and each opinion holds equal value – no matter if you are a first-time wine buyer or a seasoned wine drinker with 1,000 bottles in one’s cellar.

Vivino is effectively the TripAdvisor of wine, for better or worse. On the downside, a few ratings could destroy the ranking of a wine perhaps because the consumer misunderstood the category or was drinking a faulty bottle. However, on the positive side, the Vivino Wine Style Awards are an unparalleled barometer of what wines are accessible in the global market and which offer enough enjoyment and relative value to be worth the coveted five-star rating.

Appealing to the mass market is also nothing to be sniffed at, and it is certainly harder to make a wine that excites thousands of different palates than a wine that appeases to just one critic. Winning a Vivino Wine Style Award shows that all the cogs of that winery are working together: excellent market positioning, good marketing and global reputation, and, last but certainly not least, making a damn good wine that everyone enjoys.

Here are the highlights of South America’s best-rated wines on Vivino, and arguably the consumers choice of the best wines in South America, with my own verdict of the winners and category.