It was an interesting and absorbing few days recently when I was one of over 50 judges for the 2026 awards, as part of the Royal Melbourne Show program.

This awards program is considered one of the most prestigious in Australia by the industry for its rigour and calibre of judges.

Although I have been a head judge for several other awards in past (which means your a team leader of sorts for your particular judging panel), as this was my first time out at Melbourne, I got be an Associate Judge, so basically, I got to judge, contribute to the deliberations of my panel team, but my scores didn’t go towards the awards tally.

Each panel consisted of three other judges, and the one I was part of had one of which was a distiller from a well known Australian company – who was our head judge, and two whisky industry experts who all had great palettes that I was in awe of for the way they could pick up an individual botanical or a kink in the production process.

The other respective teams all focused on particular types of spirits, such as whisky or tequila, or liqueurs (which seemed to be a bit of slog since there is only such much Lemoncello one can take!), over the two days.

Our focus was Contemporary Gins and Fruit flavoured gins, such as Sloe gins.

Overall there were over 1000 spirits entered, the largest ever to be considered, including over 300 gins! There was a new category also for the first time, Gin + Tonics, which saw gins matched with a particular style of tonic (nominated by the entrant), more on that later.

So following a welcome and briefing which saw a veritable who’s who of the distilling and related industry in Australia, plus two international judges, thus I was very much amongst friends and the atmosphere was focussed, professional and friendly with all views considered respectfully.

Consistent with other judging experiences, you are presented with a flight of five or more gins, just numbered, so you know the type, and that’s all.

You work quietly through the flight, scoring and taking notes, then convene together as the team to see where we landed as a group and work through anything we highlighted or may have missed.

We were not aiming for group think, but consensus on what where the score should be given the virtues or flaws of each entry.

Using a Ipad interface, there is a scoring process for each spirit:

• Colour or appearance: 10 points
• Nose: 20 points
• Palette: 40 points
• Balance: 10 points
• Finish: 20 points

A Gold medal was a collective score 90 or more, Silver, 82-89.9 and Bronze 74 – 81.9. One nice touch was when a Gold was settled on, each team would ring a gong and all would clap and cheer over judging days.

Scores were then combined to reflect the panel consenus and having the range of experience and perspectives gives the process real integrity, as I might pick something up that another judge doesn’t, and vice versa.

Do you get tipsy judging?

No, one sniffs, sips + spits and sometimes repeats for each spirit, and you are concentrating the whole time, so yes, one does start to tire, but with breaks and palette fresheners like plain crackers and soda water you can keep the focus up.

I think we covered something like 70 or so gins on day 1, and about 40 or the next morning, then the gin and tonic class, plus a special round for some gold winners for the other head judges to consider.

It was a challenge with some of the flavoured gins to be honest, one has to get past any personal bias about a style you may not choose for yourself.

What is trying to say and be, is it well executed, what is the flavour profile definition, how well is the spirit and flavours balanced?

We appreciated a gin that had something clear to say, as it were, and said it well.

When it came to the gin + tonic class, being a new judging category we had a bit more latitude as to what made for a great entry, since the scoring model for the single gins, really didn’t apply.

What makes for a great or good G+T?

So we considered was the combination greater than the sum of its parts, was the gin lifted by the tonic, did it make you want another? For the most part we can to furious agreement when coming back to compare scores.

Sometimes the gin was simply lost in the mix or the choice of tonic didn’t set off the gins flavour to best advantage.

So after two days of that I was ready for a beer!

If you were an entrant, you can be assured that each spirit was treated with the respect it deserved.

It was a privilege to be amongst some of the best in the business and we had such fun in a colleagiate way, and it is nice to know I can hold my own in such company.

There as a third day for all the head judges who then examined the Gold medal winners for the best in show and all the results will be out in a few weeks time – late July.