Spirits & Wine Award Winners, Top Scoring Products, Beverage Industry Trends and Best Wine and Spirits Lists

Portugal is well known for its red wines of quality and value, but Portugal's white wines also deserve a spotlight. The names of the white wine varieties such as arinto and antao vaz may be unfamiliar, but the flavors are easy to love. With the same value carrying over from the red wine world, most of the high scoring finalist wines are priced between $10-15, making these some of the best values available. Here are the top 7 high scoring Portuguese white wines from Ultimate Wine Challenge 2018.

Baijiu and kaoliang, a subtype of baijiu made from sorghum, are unfamiliar flavors to most. Does mixing them into cocktails help ease people into these spirit categories? It’s too early to tell, but here at Ultimate Spirits Challenge every spirit gets put to the test in mixed drinks to see how they stack up. These are our top rated cocktails using baijiu and kaoliang, all drop dead delicious.

Shiraz, the Australian version of syrah, makes big and rich red wines, often with layers of spicy fruit and velvety textures. The McGuigan The Plan Shiraz 2016 from South Eastern Australia was the top scoring shiraz of 2018’s Ultimate Wine Competition with 92 Points and comes highly recommended by the wine judges.

Sotol is an interesting spirit that has just recently come into the international market. Culturally the same as mezcal, with similar production methods, the major difference is the source plant, dasylirion wheeleri, also called the desert spoon plant. The plant is a close cousin of the agave or maguey, but produces a spirit with distinct flavors, generally more herbal, vegetal, and acidic than many other agave spirits.