Top Seed, Top Spot

Piper de Raadt has won the Barossa Bowl, and nobody could lay a glove on her. She topped Round 1 with the best score in the room, walked into the Blackout as the top seed and won every match she played, finishing the job against Topsi W. in the final. Susanne Wuerfl took third and Pedro fourth.

It was a big day for the new faces too. Thirteen of the twenty-one players were at their first cup, and all four semi-finalists came from that group. The regulars from Clare and the Hills didn't get a look-in past the quarter-finals.

Round 1

Round 1 is the options game: five wines poured blind, five multiple-choice questions on each (Old World or New World, country, region, grape and vintage) and 25 points up for grabs.

The line-up was a proper test. A Ms. L Single Vineyard Riesling 2025 from the Eden Valley, a Kopp Roter Porphyr Pinot Noir 2022 from Baden in Germany, a Whistler Grenache 2024, a Cirillo Estate Single Vineyard Shiraz 2025 and a Gioso Barbaresco 2021.

The room landed 289 of the 500 calls, or 58%. That's a touch better than Clare (55%) and well short of the Hills (67%).

Piper set the pace with 21 out of 25, the best score of the day. She went a perfect five from five on the Barbaresco and dropped just one point on each of the other four wines. Shelby H. and Topsi W. chased hard on 20 and Pedro was right there on 19. Those four went straight through to the Blackout.

Home Ground Blues

Now for the bit the Barossa won't want to hear. Three of the five wines were locals, the Riesling from the Eden Valley and the Grenache and Shiraz from the Barossa Valley, and the room sent most of them packing.

The Grenache was the big one. Every player had the same three regions to choose from, and nineteen of twenty went elsewhere: eleven to McLaren Vale and eight to Heathcote. Only Mel Hamilton brought it home to the Barossa Valley. Remember, this was at The Barossa Cellar.

The Riesling copped the same treatment, with eleven players shipping it off to the Clare Valley and seven finding the Eden Valley. The Shiraz fared better, eleven players placing it in the Barossa, but only four nailed the 2025 vintage.

Then there was the Pinot Noir from Baden, which had almost the whole room fooled. Twelve players swore it was French, six went Italian, and just two, PM and Viene Gladigau, called it German.

Across all five wines, Old World or New World was the easy call, with 83 right out of 100. Region was the killer again at 40 out of 100, just like at the Hills.

Round 2

Round 2 is sixteen trivia questions on your phone. Everyone plays, and the four best scores from players not already through grab the last four seats in the Blackout. It's all about the seats, with no ladder points on offer.

Molly Yang took it out with 13 out of 16. PM, Susanne Wuerfl and Tarita Furlan also punched their tickets on 12.

And the Barossa tripped the room up again. The two toughest trivia questions were both about the region. Only two players knew Chardonnay is the Barossa Valley's biggest white grape (664 tonnes crushed in 2025, against 411 of Semillon), and only four knew the Barossa's sister city is Grapevine, Texas.

The Blackout

This is where cups are won and lost. Players go head to head over a single wine, tasted from black glasses so nobody can see the colour. The six seed won at Clare and the seven seed won at the Hills, so the seedings weren't worth much going in.

This time the seeds fought back. In the quarter-finals Piper saw off Molly Yang, Pedro beat PM and Topsi W. got past Tarita Furlan. The upset of the day belonged to Susanne Wuerfl, who came in as the seven seed and knocked out second seed Shelby H.

Susanne's run ended against Topsi in the semi-finals, while Piper beat Pedro to book her place in the final. Susanne bounced back to beat Pedro for third.

Then the final: the one seed against the three, Piper against Topsi, and Piper got it done. She is the first top seed to win a cup this season.

What It's Worth

And what a haul. Piper banked 15 points for playing, 21 for Round 1 and 100 for the win, a massive 136 points in one afternoon. She has added seven more since from the weekly online game and her player profile, and now sits on top of the season ladder with 143, one point clear of Siyuan Hua.

The big prize is the Free Run, a guaranteed seat at the Grand Final in Gumeracha on Saturday 5 December, where 24 players play for $5,000. Roberta Ruotolo booked one at Clare, Stefan Sancin at the Hills, and now Piper has hers.

Two cups to go and two Free Runs still on the table: the Coonawarra Cup at Bellwether on Saturday 24 October, and the McLaren Vale Cup at Angove on Saturday 14 November. Grab your seat at bottleshock.tv/league/cups before somebody else does.

One player arrived after Round 1 and played from Round 2, so Round 1 counts twenty players and the day counts twenty-one.