Judging Process

The integrity of the Tasting Australia Spirit Awards and the judging process is key to its success. Tasting Australia Spirit Awards judges come from diverse backgrounds and experiences, including journalists, retail buyers, distributors, bartenders, and educators. They have been selected for their expertise, professionalism and reputation within industry and are vetted by a Judging Committee to ensure independence and impartiality. 

Judging of the 2023 Tasting Australia Spirit Awards will be held in Adelaide from Monday 18 September through Wednesday 20 September. Judging is closed to Entrants and the public.

• Entries will be allocated a tasting order number, separate from the catalogue (exhibit) number, to ensure the anonymity of the exhibit and integrity within the judging process.
• Entries will be judged ‘blind’ according to class and by percentage alcohol (% ABV); lowest to highest.
• Entries are critically and quantitatively evaluated for their commercial excellence, quality attributes and trueness to type.
• Entries are not judged or ranked against each other but are assessed on their own merits.
• Entries will be judged to the internationally recognised 100-point scoring system.  Classes will be judged to bronze, silver and gold.
• The top entries from each category will be individually and independently reassessed and ranked using the Borda Count method – only gold awarded entries are eligible for the Best Award in each category. 

The role of the head judge is to ensure that judging is conducted in an efficient and professional manner, to ensure consistency in scoring across the judging panels, to encourage objective and unbiased judging, and to adjudicate where panels may be divided in the awarding of a score.

The head judge of the 2023 Tasting Australia Spirit Awards is Ollie Margan of Maybe Mae.

Each panel will consist of not less than four (4) judges. 

All entries will be scored out of one hundred (100) points and will be assessed against the below criteria/attributes: