A total of 40 wine tasters will evaluate almost 300 wine samples from 19 countries, including Japan, India and Uruguay.

The results will be known upon closing the competition on Sunday, while the awards will be conferred at the opening of the Wine Fair in Ljubljana on 3 September.

Returning after a five-year break, the Vino Ljubljana wine competition is considered one of the top ten wine competitions in the world, the event organisers said in a press release earlier this week.

It is not going to be easy to choose world champions in the finals, competition president Iztok Klenar said after outlining the requirements for the job of a wine taster.

The origins of the wine-tasting in Ljubljana go as far as 1811, when the first "Tasting of Illyrian Wines" was held in the capital, while the predecessor of Vino Ljubljana competition was held in 1954 for the first time.