Selezione dei Vini di Toscana [Selection of Tuscan Wines Awards]: a bit of history

The competition was launched in 1989 under the auspices of the Italian Ministry of Agricultural Policies as an initiative to enhance and foster the great variety of regional wine productions. It is organized every two years by Toscana Promozione in partnership with the Enoteca Italiana of Siena, the Italian Oenologists’ and Oenotechnicians’ Association, and the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade.

Its main objectives are to stir Tuscan producers to invest ever more in quality and to select the best Tuscan wines, so as to eventually create a true ‘bouquet par excellence’ and give it greater visibility in the course of promotional activities conceived to develop contacts with specialized chain operators, buyers, importers and agents of the so-called HoReCa channel (Hotels, Restaurants, Cafés).  

In fact, the Selezione is not a competition reserved to big producers, but also to smaller enterprises, which often yield real jewels of enology that unfortunately remain sort of concealed due to difficulty in carrying our advertising campaigns. Testimony to the ever growing interest shown by the many producers who are often aloof from competitions is the exponential growth of competing enterprises and submitted labels since the very first edition of the Selezione: from 317 labels submitted in 1989 to 1,206 in 2008.