Cervins Central Coast: Judge & Jury: What It’s Like to Judge at a Wine Competition

Lucky me, I judge at wine competitions. But I routinely get comments that run the gamut from, “I’m jealous,” to, “Michael, do you actually work for a living?” So to quash the misinformation about wine judging, I’m putting a cork in several myths. Within the State Fair system I have judged at the California State Fair, the El Dorado County Fair (known as the Mountain Democrat Wine Competition), and the Central Coast Wine Competition (part of the California Mid-State Fair) which is a competition of wines from several counties including Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Monterey, and several other fairs. So, here’s what you need to know.

Myth #1: Wine competitions are just a chance to drink lots of wine.

Actually, no one drinks wine at wine competitions. Judges evaluate between 60 to 90 wines a day, giving full attention to each wine - a time consuming and focused endeavor. We smell them, swirl them, then spit them into dump buckets. What develops is palate fatigue, whereby you’ve had so many wines that your taste buds need a break. Each panel has a plate of celery, olives, bread, cheese and sliced beef available to help cleanse the palate. And a day’s work can mean tasting through 15 Cabernet Sauvignons, then 30 Chardonnays, 20 Pinot Noirs, 18 white Rhone blends, 4 dessert wines and then 7 sparkling wines. Yes, it’s taxing physically, but also mentally as we try and be fair to each wine, from the first few to # 89.

The back room - where judges aren't allowed

Myth # 2: Wine judging is rigged.

All wines are tasted blind and a dedicated volunteer staff catalogs, opens, pours, numbers and delivers wine in glass to judges so we have little information about the wine – we don’t want to prejudice the outcome. We usually know the variety, perhaps the vintage date, but most other information is left with the volunteers behind closed doors. And this is exactly how a wine should be evaluated. I can attest that some wines win awards and when we find out the producer, we’re surprised, and yes, sometimes embarrassed because we think it’s a wine we would never have purchased on our own. But that’s what is so cool. Most competitions allow us to give a wine a gold medal, silver, bronze, or the dreaded “no award.”

Myth #3: Wine “judges” are a bunch of people who know little about wine.

Doug Frost (foreground) doing his thing

Wine competition judges are comprised of professionals in the wine industry, like; winemakers, wine retailers (specialty wine shops and wine buyers for mega-stores and restaurants); wine media (seasoned wine writers for newspapers, magazines, websites, radio, and blogs) and folks in the culinary world. For example this year (2013), the Central Coast Wine Competition had judges like Doug Frost from Kansas City, one of the most respected sommeliers and wine educators in the U.S, and one of only four people in the entire world to hold the duel titles Master of Wine, and Master Sommelier. And William Bloxom-Carter, the executive Chef and food and beverage director of the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, a position he’s held for nearly 30 years (and if you think his job is cutting celery sticks for Playboy models, you’re dead wrong. Chef Carter plans and executes tons of dinners often time for over 1,000 people). At the California State Fair the pros included Joe Roberts (from Philadelphia) and Robert Jennings, two of the biggest wine bloggers, to winemakers like Leslie Renaud (from Santa Barbara), and Jackson Starr (from Grass Valley). In Placerville this year there were judges like Mike Dunne, the former wine and food writer for the Sacramento Bee for 30 years, to Charlie Tsegeletos, the longtime winemaker at Cline Cellars in Sonoma. So it’s a safe bet we know wine.

The Judges of the Central Coast Wine Competition

Myth #4: No one cares about awards and scores.

Think what you like, but a gold medal at a competition translates to sales, bragging rights and marketing potential. Judging is made up of multiple panels and each individual panel consists, usually, of three judges. It’s important to know that gold, silver and even bronze medal winning wines receive their medals by these panels, not an individual. Double Gold awards (meaning every judge on a panel gave it a gold medal) and Best of Class wines are voted on by an even larger panel, ranging from 20 to 70 people. Of course not all judges agree and I’ve sat on panels where wines I’ve loved have not been loved by my peers, and vice versa. But beyond that, for people like me as a wine writer, even for judges who work in the retail environment, we get to discover new wines, new wineries and promote them.

Wine Judging Ain't All Glamerous

County fair wine competitions are held in unglamorous settings, usually a big warehouse-type building. Sure, other wine competitions are at nice restaurants or places like Fort Mason overlooking the San Francisco Bay but the state fair system is pretty much nuts and bolts and nothing fancy. Another thing to know is that each competition has a chief judge who oversees all the other judges, makes decisions and solves problems. And there are the volunteers, all those folks who go unheralded and work the backroom to help everything run efficiently. For example at the California State Fair in Sacramento, we had 75 judges, 100 volunteers and 2,600 wines. Do the math. At the El Dorado County Fair Wine Competition they have a special award known as the Backroom Award, whereby the volunteers give out an award for their favorite wine, which is a pretty cool thing to do. So the next time someone you know is off to a wine competition, you’ll have a better understanding of what we do and when you see a medal winning wine, you’ll know that a lot of work has gone into it, so give that wine a try. And stop by your local county fair, or one of these.