On Wine Competitions
This week we received the results from the 2021 New Zealand International Wine Show. I have been wanting to enter my wines into this particular competition for many years. However, it seemed each year I would forget when the deadline is and miss it. Finally late last year I entered just about every wine in our lineup that was eligible. Because of lockdowns and our state of the world, the judging was delayed a couple of months. Finally, last week the group of judges met for a few days up in Auckland to taste and rate all the entrants. These results are now posted online and I have to say, my wines did pretty good. A couple of golds, a couple of silvers, and even more bronze medals. Each category will also have a trophy winner, that will no doubt help with sales, at least a bit.
I went into this competition, as I do with any wine competition, with eyes wide open. Years and years ago, back in the olden days of the late ‘naughts, I would have not been interested in entering my wines. To me it’s like an art competition, judging something that is so subjective and personal seemed crazy to me. It almost made me squeamish to think of these competitions; medals and trophies for something I am so passionate about creating. Add to the fact that I would hear many winemakers and wineries constantly complain about the results, I just was not interested. Alas, the industry and my friends have worn me down. I went to my first wine show dinner (with a free ticket!) back in 2015 and had a great time. How hard was it to have a great time sitting in a banquet room with a bunch of our colleagues and sponsors drinking great wines and eating fine cuisine? So slowly I began to ease and mature into someone who might be interested in these submissions, judgings, and gala dinners.
First, I needed to understand more about how this works. I did have some experience to draw from, having done countless blind tastings over the years. I know that on any given day a $15 bottle of bubbles can (mistakenly?) be more attractive than a $150 bottle of Grand Cru Champagne. I have seen it happen firsthand. I have seen winemakers rip apart and review their own wines in a blind tasting. Many times these tastings, and any individual result, might just be lucky in the sense of where the wine is placed in the lineup. A gutsy, rich Chardonnay will taste flabby and flat if it is tasted immediately after an acid-driven, reductive-style Chardonnay in a lineup. A beautifully subtle and balanced red blend will taste boring and unattractive if it is tasted immediately following an overoaked, over-extracted big red. So some of this is luck. Some wines are just more ‘showy’ and more suited, whether purposely designed or not, for the wine competition format.
The best wine competitions try very hard to take out the above factors the best they can. They do this by having a great deal of overlapping; second and third tastings of any group of wines. They also try to gather folks who are real pros at this type of judging. This is different from wine writing; where a good journalist with a good palate can take their time with any one particular wine, match it with food, revisit it hours later, contemplate, pontificate, procrastinate, pixilate, and partake over and over. At a wine competition these wine tasting mercenaries are there to quickly work through hundreds, maybe thousands of wines in a matter of days or hours. It sounds fun and it is, but it is also hard work that is taken very seriously. These groups of industry professionals, Sommeliers, and Winemakers have their work cut out for them at any given wine competition or wine show. They need to work quickly and accurately and really think about what they are trying to achieve. This type of thing is entirely too regimented for me. I have never done this nor have I ever been a steward for these competitions, where you clean glasses and put out bottles for days with the opportunity to taste all the wines when the judges are done.
So with all the care, curriculum, and organization that goes into the very good wine shows and competitions, why do so many complain about them? Well, firstly there are so many wine competitions nowadays that it is tough to keep up. Every country, every region, every magazine, every conference, and really anyone who wants to organize one, has a wine competition. So it is tough to decipher for the average consumer which ones actually mean anything, and I think that is a fair enough assessment. It has been for the past 5 or 6 years, until this recent NZIWS entry, I have only entered two competitions. One very local, the Hawke’s Bay A&P Bayley’s Wine Awards. This one is fun because you are competing against your friends and peers locally and you know these producers on a first name basis and the judges are local and based in other wine regions around New Zealand. The other is very international, the Texsom International Wine Awards where thousands of wines are competing from around the world in Dallas, Texas each year judged by 55 Soms, Master Soms, Masters of Wine and Wine Pros from eleven different countries.
Thankfully, I have done pretty well over the years at both having won a trophy for the Decibel Viognier at my first ever awards in Hawke’s Bay in 2017. And, the first year I entered into Texsom, I took out the trophy for top Pinot Noir and once for top NZ Wine at that show. As they say, you can’t win if you don’t play the game. Given the size of our production and the number of wines I enter, I take great pride in these wines. This is because what most people complain about with any of these competitions is that ‘they’re not fair’ and ‘ the same wines always win’. Well to the former, I completely disagree. I know how they are judged and fairness is at the top of the list of responsibilities at any real competition. As for the latter, it is sort of true. At many of these competitions year in and year out we see the same names. But it is no conspiracy. It is purely a numbers game.
The large wineries making quality wines generally enter every category because they make so many different wines. On top of that, within each category, they may have two, three, or even four different wines in that category. Still more, take into consideration that because of their production size they can cut out bad or questionable barrels and downgrade them into lower-tier wines, showing they just have more options when making their ‘reserve’ or top tier wines. So it should not be a surprise that many of the same names keep popping up as gold medalists and trophy winners. We should all know this as just part of the game. We should not be frustrated by this. Another saying I grew up with in Philly is ‘don’t hate the playa, hate the game’. The rules are as fair as they are going to be. You know the game. Think of it in sports terms. It’s fun to hate the NY Yankees, or the LA Lakers or Manchester United, or whatever team can buy themselves a championship. The real glory and great stories are when one of the small gals or guys or teams gets through and wins one. Those are the great moments. Celebrate those moments.
I realize how tough it is to get one through even to the finals (a gold medal) let alone a trophy. It is a game. It is fun and it is marketing at the end of the day. Take it with a grain of salt, but enjoy it. And if you haven’t followed any wine competitions before, the New Zealand International Wine Competition is a fun place to start. Check out the roadshow when they bring the wines around New Zealand to show the gold medal winners. Try and buy your favorite bottles as they will be some truly fantastic wines. Or if you’re in the USA or elsewhere internationally, check out the Texsom IWS and see if you can find some of these wines in your local shops. It is at least one way to sift through the endless amount of wine out there!
Cheers, dB
