Wine to be sold after judging

Bottles aplenty: Spiegelau International Wine Competition steward Richelle Collier prepares glasses for tasting more than 1100 varieties at the Marlborough Convention Centre yesterday.

Relevant offersMarlborough people will be able to buy excess wine from the Spiegelau International Wine Competition 2011 when unused bottles are auctioned on Saturday.

It is the first Spiegelau competition to be held, with the judges in action from today until Thursday. It is run by the same team that ran the Liquorland Top 100 International Wine Competition.

Spiegelau – the competition's principal sponsor – is a German wine glass manufacturer.

Competition director Belinda Jackson, of Renwick, said the competition was "filling the gap" left after the Liquorland competition made 2010 its final year.

Each winery involved has three bottles of each wine that is to be judged – the third of which is only used if the wine reaches the latter stages of the competition.

These unused third bottles, from many of the more than 1100 entrants, will be auctioned.

Proceeds, which Ms Jackson hopes will be between $10,000 and $15,000, will go to a charitable trust for wine industry research.

Cases will have a reserve of $120 for white and $150 for red. They will come in cases of the same variety or half and half.

"We wanted to auction them in Marlborough so that people locally can benefit," said Ms Jackson.

Marlborough wine industry representatives have been invited to taste the wines after each day's judging, which will be chaired by Mike DeGaris from Sydney.

The 2pm auction will be in Marlborough Convention Centre in Blenheim.