Perhaps wine competitions - and stickers - are addictive. Despite raging controversies, wineries just can’t seem to get enough.

It’s early in the season for wine competitions (mid-winter when winemakers mellow out a bit), and already a number of controversies are heating up as results come in. But for all those verbal battles (they seem to get more and more fierce every year and this year is already at a high temperature), wine producers just don’t stay away, taking their (sometime many) bottles, and paying up their (hefty) fees, to whoever calls the next new competition. (A brand-new pinotage contest has just been announced).

All worth the marketing value the producers say, and those stickers (awful looking and miserable as some are) draw attention in fierce shelve battles. Fair enough. (Especially if you have endless supplies of wine and money.)

But perhaps there’s a deeper psychological reason why even some of the best names in the business keep on at it: testing their product confidence. It’s a human thing to be patted on the back, so why wouldn’t winemakers feel the same? (Of course, the contentious results of the recent foolish sexist competition is somewhat of a giggle in this context.)

Looked at from another perspective, a motivation for entering for something like Wine magazine’s Shiraz Challenge or (upcoming) MCC version, could be the benchmarking of your wine. But then, of course, those competitions need to award the real winners, set up the finest in the bottles, punt those which have a record of excellence.

Unfortunately, as the recent results of the mentioned shiraz race showed, judges are not the absolute arbiters in the benchmark stakes.

So why enter these pricey and dicey wine jamborees? Methinks ego, on occasion, has plenty to do with it.

* A new lusciously-priced wine contest, the Absa Perold Cape Blend Competition, is on the cards for those who play with pinotage in red blends. In a serious punt for establishing the idea of using pinotage in a so-called ‘Cape blend’, Absa has announced high sponsorship for such a taste-off in the future (possibly already next year).

The backer of the very successful Absa Top Ten pinotage contest is to put its money generously towards the project, although details are to be worked out by the Pinotage Association.

Somewhat distressing though, is the announcement that eligible wines must contain a minimum of 30 percent pinotage. (The top is 75 percent, a logical cut-off.) The controversial minimum restriction will disadvantage many very fine wines that use less very effectively in unusual top-end red blends. Surely the association’s aim (‘at creating a signature style for the composition of true Cape blends’) is to get winemakers to make outstanding wine in an original way, expressive of the ‘Cape’, and making use of pinotage.