More than one hundred national and international wine specialists will be at CNEMA, Santarém, to review 1050 Portuguese wines (a record number of wines in the challenge’s history). Just like the previous editions, the challenge aims to be an event with international relevance when promoting and increasing awareness about Portuguese wines. Jorge Monteiro, CEO of ViniPortugal, states that “to the majority of the 25 international judges, Wines of Portugal Challenge will represent a journey to Portuguese wines: wines tastings at CNEMA and a parallel program with several opportunities to learn more about our wines”. “The international judges are from Canada, USA, Brazil, China, Japan, South Korea and Europe (from France to Russia). All of them will leave Portugal with a better idea of Portuguese wines - wine diversity and the high average quality of our wines. We believe they will have a clear understanding about Portuguese wines value which combine tradition and modernity. Modernity in “global issues” such as techniques and technology associated to traditions that we still keep, like the “local” indigenous grape varieties, the art of blend or traditional foot-treading”, We are convinced that will leave with a clear understanding that it is worth looking for wines from Portugal, which now combine tradition with modernity. Modernity as is "global", the wine techniques and technology associated with the tradition that we learned is that maintaining the "local" indigenous varieties, the art of the blend, or treading the wine or hoist "says the ViniPortugal’s CEO. During the technical sessions the 25 international judges will have the opportunity to share experiences with 75 Portuguese winemakers that will be part of the jury, therefore who makes wines will talk about Portuguese wines with people who reviews them in different markets. According to the final score obtained by wine tasting, the wine will achieve gold, silver or bronze medals. Wines chosen to gold medal (according to the score) will be reviewed again by the Grand Jury. After that, the best wines will receive the great gold medal. The wines with great gold medal will have the opportunity to attend ViniPortugal events: workshops for professionals, wine tastings for consumers, city tastings and wine fairs, as well a great highlight in the Wines of Portugal wine tasting room in Lisboa and Porto.