Good Grape Wine Company

July 27 2007

Wine & The State Fair Judging, Indy Gets a Turn

Arriving shortly after the completion of the California State Fair Wine Competition is the Indy International Wine Competition, the largest in the U.S., representing over 3700 submissions and currently taking place (July 26th – 28th) in Indianapolis.

After the recent hubaloo with the Charles Shaw gold medal winners at the California wine competition, it will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes out of the Indy competition in terms of press.  It goes without saying that if you’re the competition organizer the last thing you want to have happen is have the boo birds come out when a wine is given a double, or concordance gold medal.  It undermines the good intentions of the judges and the judging criteria, however stringent they may be.

Bronco Wine Company and their Charles Shaw brand are delighted, however.  Cases are flying out of Trader Joe’s by the trunkful.  Just the same, I’m sure the CA competition organizers would have preferred that the complete public tide went in favor of seeing Trader Joe’s as a fabulous value instead of a segment of the population being completely dubious.

I checked out the judges from 2006 for the California State Fair compared against the 2006 list for Indy to see if there were any commonalities.  Mostly, it’s people from the trade with the occasional doctor and layperson thrown in for good measure.  The Indy competition judging is led by Dan Berger.  I would be very interested to hear his thoughts on the quality and caliber of judging at not only the Indy competition, but at others where he is the marquee judge.

In many ways, the Indy competition is an interesting one and a potential challenge for the judges.  Compared to other wine competitions, Indy is the one competition where you get more of the fruit wines, native U.S. varietals and some complete one-off’s—a true test against judging as the judge has a smaller likelihood of having a memory bank of recall to judge standards against—Traminette and Catwaba, anyone?

Depsite my defense of the state fair wine competition as a valid system, safeguards should continue to be taken for integrity.  It’s kind of like what we’re seeing in the NBA and baseball right now.  Just when you think everything is clicking along smoothly a controversy emerges that shakes the foundation of the game.  In the both situations it’s alleged nefarious outside influences that question the integrity of the game.  In wine competitions, it’s judge competence.

This is why I think all of these competitions need to move to unified certification for every judge that participates.  In both the list for the California State Fair Wine Competition and the Indy International Wine Competition, I saw 2006 judges that were, presumably, hard core enthusiasts, but listed as a medical doctor.

The American Wine Society has a “Wine Judge Certification” that appears rigorous—requiring a full three years to complete, combining self-study along with in-person testing.  The self-study, like a lot of wine certifications relies on some of the premiere text books of university wine curriculum including “The University Wine Course” by Marian Baldy along with a good number of other wine sensory evaluation books.  The certification is complete with a capstone test in year three.  In and of itself, the time commitment alone would weed out the average palate, or those less inclined to the time commitment for study.  Those in the trade, could, of course, “test out” of certain requirements in years 1 and 2 to more quickly accelerate their certification.  To read more of the criteria for this certification check out the link here, here and here.

In my opinion, while I think blind-tasting, with scores batched to a mean against the average is an adequate evaluation tool; I think these Wine Competitions would be doing themselves a tremendous favor by using this period of time in the growth of wine consumption in the U.S. to also up their judging criteria.  The AWS Wine Judge Certification seems as good a place to start as any and would prevent second-guessing that undermines integrity.

In the meantime, I think I may pop down to the Indy Competition, because opened, previously judged bottles are tasted with the public, no certification is required--only a gullet and I have a well-qualified one at that. 

digg this | toast this! | add to del.icio.us | add to newsvine | add to furl | add to reddit |

Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print | Email This