Award Criteria

How wine lists get scored.

Different award bodies judge wine lists by different criteria — and iSommelier has its own transparent score on top. Explore how the awards work, check your list against them, and try our proprietary Wine Score.

Australia’s Wine List of the Year

The criteria, in the award body’s own words.

AWLOTY's published judging criteria, based on the 2026 release — quoted verbatim from the award body, not our paraphrase.

Note · These are AWLOTY’s published criteria, reproduced verbatim (2026 release). iSommelier is not affiliated with AWLOTY; a self-assessment against these criteria is an estimate to guide your next step — it is not an official judging result and does not guarantee the award.

Content

Quality is key to choice of wines
Having an original and innovative choice, with some mature wines from good vintages, avoiding poor vintages
Carefully matching varieties and regions
Having an appropriate variety of wines by the glass
Adequate list of aperitifs, beers, spirits, liqueurs and waters/non-alcoholic

Balance

Balance of pricing relevant to your establishment
Domestic and imported wines, regions and wine styles

Suitability

To cuisine, style and image of establishment

Presentation

Includes vintages
Accurate and consistent presentation of information
Clear design for easy navigation

Pricing

Appropriateness, value

Check your list.

Score your list against the published criteria above. This is an iSommelier estimate, not an official AWLOTY result — nothing is sent anywhere.

Describe your list

Pick the closest match for each published criterion — the estimate updates as you go.

Content

Quality is key to choice of wines

Having an original and innovative choice, with some mature wines from good vintages, avoiding poor vintages

Carefully matching varieties and regions

Having an appropriate variety of wines by the glass

Adequate list of aperitifs, beers, spirits, liqueurs and waters/non-alcoholic

Balance

Balance of pricing relevant to your establishment

Domestic and imported wines, regions and wine styles

Suitability

To cuisine, style and image of establishment

Presentation

Includes vintages

Accurate and consistent presentation of information

Clear design for easy navigation

Pricing

Appropriateness, value

67out of 100

Estimated self-check

Recommended range

An estimate only — not an AWLOTY One-glass result.

Content10/15

5 published criteria

Balance4/6

2 published criteria

Suitability2/3

1 published criterion

Presentation6/9

3 published criteria

Pricing2/3

1 published criterion

Equal weight across each published criterion is iSommelier modelling. AWLOTY does not publish numeric weights. This is not an official judging result.