Australian wine has once again reaffirmed its quality and consistency at the Decanter World Wine Awards, clinching four Best in Show, 11 Platinum, and 65 Gold medals, along with 643 medals overall. This tally places Australia in fourth overall behind France, Italy and Spain.
Additionally, Australia was also recognised as the number one country for the newly-established medal yield metric, with a density of 4.04 medals per 1,000 hectares of vineyard area.
“While there was a slight dip in the number of Best in Show awards, a strong overall medal count has placed Australia first in the new metric of medals per hectare of vineyard area,” says Huon Hooke, Australian co-chair of the Decanter World Wine Awards.
“The mix of regions and producers was also heartening, with some of our most renowned wineries performing as expected, but also some lesser-known names emerging to receive well-deserved recognition.”
Building on this, Decanter World Wine Awards’ Head of Marketing Lilla O’Conner adds that “Australia’s global reputation was further reinforced with four wines featured in the prestigious Top 50, representing four distinct regions: Wirra Wirra The 12th Man Chardonnay, Adelaide Hills 2024, Xanadu Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River 2022, Barossa Old Vine Company Shiraz, Barossa Valley 2022, [and] Trentham Estate Reserve Shiraz, Heathcote 2023.”
In addition to Australia’s four Best in Show wines, a further 11 wines from six regions were awarded 97 points and Platinum medals.
When taking all medals into account, South Australia was the best performing state, scoring 309 of the 643 total medals and half of Australia’s Best in Show titles. This includes Wirra Wirra’s 12th Man Chardonnay 2024 from the Adelaide Hills, which was one of only two chardonnays to be recognised among the competition’s top 50 wines alongside the Jean-Marc Brocard Bougros Chablis Grand Cru 2023.
“The result underscores a new reality – Australia now stands shoulder to shoulder with Burgundy as a global benchmark for site-expressive Chardonnay,” says Matt Deller MW, Wirra Wirra’s CEO. “For The 12th Man to stand alongside a Grand Cru Chablis as one of the best Chardonnays in the world is an emphatic statement about how far Australia has come.”
Reflecting on the 2022 Barossa Old Vine Company Shiraz, South Australia’s other top 50 wine, the judging panel wrote: “This darkly coloured 2022 example seduced our judges with its languid but alluring aromatic wealth, depth of flavour, structural seriousness and the softness of its balance – all very different from the opulent, starkly balanced and sometimes over-showy examples most wine lovers will remember.”
Margaret River was Australia’s most successful subregion in this year’s awards, winning four Platinum medals and one Best in Show across four different grape varieties.
Notably, Deep Woods’ reinforced its recent National Wine Show 2025 White Wine of Show recognition after Reserve Chardonnay 2023 scored among Australia’s top three chardonnays, with its 97 points only matched by Wirra Wirra’s 12th Man and Brokenwood’s Indigo Vineyard Chardonnay 2023. Brokenwood also had a second platinum medal for Ilr Reserve Semillon 2019.
Reflecting on Deep Woods’ performance, Group Winemaker Julian Langworthy said: “Decanter World Wine Awards – it’s quite the stage and one we are incredibly proud of having done so well on. It really is a testament to our winemaking and viticulture teams, grape growers and the regions of Margaret River and Tasmania that our wines have performed so well, despite the staggering number of entries.”
Awarded Best in Show, Xanadu’s Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 marks the fifth Margaret River cabernet sauvignon to place among the top 50 wines in the Decanter World Wine Awards, which is now in its 22nd year.
“We’ve known it since the beginning, back in the 1960s; that was the moment when John Gladstones first suggested that Cabernet Sauvignon and Margaret River might make a fruitful partnership, and when his recommendations were taken up by the region’s pioneering amateurs,” the judging panel wrote. “This, the fifth appearance for Margaret River Cabernet in our Best in Show selection, confirms it yet again: Cabernet feels very much at home in these rangy, coastal vineyards with their sustaining maritime warmth.”
Australia’s final Best in Show was Heathcote wine Trentham Estate Reserve Shiraz 2023. “Remarkably, out of the 29 reds from Australia that we’ve found for the Best in Show selections over the last decade, none have yet come from Victoria – so a big welcome to this Shiraz from Heathcote,” said the judges.
The medal tally from the Decanter World Wine Awards 2025
Summing up the 22nd annual Decanter World Wine Awards, judge and Master of Wine Tim Marson said: “What makes Decanter World Wine Awards so special is not only the calibre of the judges, the very high quality of the judge’s assessments of the wines, but also the reach they have globally. Areas of specialism covering all major wine regions of the world and the fact that they come from around the world together in London for these two weeks of the year to judge at the biggest wine competition in the world.”
Australia’s 15 highest scoring 97 point wines at the Decanter World Wine Awards 2025 were:
Morris Cellar Reserve Grand Topaque NVMorris Cellar Reserve Grand Tawny NVGralyn Estate Museum Rare Muscat NVYarra Yering Agincourt Cabernet-Malbec 2022Barossa Old Vine Company Shiraz 2022Fermoy Wilyabrup Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2022Xanadu Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2022Brokenwood IIr Reserve Semillon 2019Wirra Wirra The 12th Man Chardonnay 2024Brokenwood Indigo Vineyard Chardonnay 2023Bay of Fires Pinot Noir 2023Cape Mentelle Heritage Shiraz 2023Deep Woods Estate Reserve Chardonnay 2023Heirloom Vineyards Shiraz 2023Trentham Estate Reserve Shiraz 2023
To view the full Australian and international results, click here