{"id":5552,"date":"2011-10-06T21:09:03","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T01:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hagarty-on-wine.com\/OnWineBlog\/?p=5552"},"modified":"2011-10-06T21:09:03","modified_gmt":"2011-10-07T01:09:03","slug":"and-the-wine-winners-are%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hagarty-on-wine.com\/OnWineBlog\/and-the-wine-winners-are%e2%80%a6\/","title":{"rendered":"And the Wine Winners are\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Understanding How the Best Wines in a Competition Become Medalists<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The room is hushed.\u00a0 Nineteen men and women at four tables labor over several glasses of wine placed in front of each of them.\u00a0 The only sound is sniff and sip, followed by murmurs of quiet conversation.\u00a0 After two days and 109 individual flights—comprising 564 wines—the entrants will be awarded either a bronze, silver or gold medal.\u00a0 Or none at all.
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

This is how the seventh annual wine competition sponsored by the Atlantic Seaboard Wine Association, ASWA, unfolded on July 23 & 24, 2011 at the Dominion Valley Regency Club in Haymarket, Virginia.\u00a0 ASWA is one of the oldest wine organizations on the East Coast and promotes the interests of wineries in seventeen states bordering the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

But wine evaluation is seemingly an individualistic endeavor, is it not?\u00a0 How can divergent views reach consensus on what\u2019s good and what\u2019s not?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about the participants and the methodology.<\/p>\n

The judges & the system<\/strong>
\nThe judges for this year\u2019s competition included professionals from every discipline in the industry, many with decades long experience and numerous wine competitions on their resumes. The panels included college professors, sommeliers, an executive with the Virginia ABC, winemakers, American Wine Society certified judges, food and beverage managers, and wine educators. This writer was honored to be a member of one of the tasting panels.<\/p>\n

Within the industry, competitions can create angst when a wine perceived by its creator as being a \u201cBest of Show\u201d receives a bronze medal or none at all. \u00a0And consumers may wonder how certain wines earn coveted gold medals.\u00a0 Thus, it\u2019s instructive to understand the evaluation process and underscore the professionalism that is brought to bear in choosing the winners.<\/p>\n

At the heart of the process used by ASWA is the Modified UC Davis 20 Point Scoring System. Unlike the 100-point scale used by major wine publications, the UC Davis system separates each element of a wine and rates its individual components before awarding a total score.<\/p>\n

All of the wines are tasted blind—coded and not bearing the name of the winery—and rated on six characteristics:<\/p>\n

Appearance–2; Aroma\u20145; Taste\u20145; Balance\u20143; After Taste\u20143, and overall Impression–2.\u00a0 The system is recognized as more objective than a single score evaluation.\u00a0 Less than 14 points earns no medal; 14.5 to <15.5 a Bronze; 15.5 to <17 a Silver; and 17 to 20 a Gold.\u00a0 It\u2019s a straightforward system yet one that employs a careful analysis of every wine entered.<\/p>\n

\"\"Here\u2019s how it works in execution.\u00a0 A wine steward and his staff orchestrate delivery of the coded wines and evaluation sheets directly to each table.\u00a0 There the wines are placed in the order they appear on the sheet in front of each judge.\u00a0 Each flight is identified by a varietal or category such as Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, vinifera blends, French hybrids or Native American grape wines.<\/p>\n

Judges employ their own personal style in rating the wines.\u00a0 Some assess the appearance and aroma of all the wines first before returning to taste.\u00a0 Others fully rate and assigned a numerical rating to each wine before proceeding to the next.\u00a0 And typically each judge smells and tastes all the wines in each flight at least twice before laying their pencil down.\u00a0 When it appears everyone has concluded their evaluations, the \u201cTable Captain\u201d or lead judge will ask the group if it\u2019s ready.\u00a0 The panel nods their agreement and the assessment enters stage two.<\/p>\n

Going around the table, each judge announces his or her score for the wine in question and the lead judge records them.\u00a0 The five scores are then added up and divided by 5 for an average score.\u00a0 For example, 15\u2026.15.5\u202613.5\u202616\u202617 would earn an initial rating of 15.4.\u00a0 The Table Captain will announce the average score and advise the group it is nearly a silver rated wine.\u00a0 \u201cWould any judge want to revaluate their score and award a silver,\u201d inquires the lead judge.\u00a0 If a judge agrees to amend, the wine is categorized a silver and the process moves to the next wine in the flight.<\/p>\n

\"\"On occasion, a judge will score a wine significantly off the mark of the other judges; for example, posting an 11.5 when the rest of the table rated it as 15 or better. The lead judge will request a clarification such as, \u201cWould the gentleman wish to advise why he rated the wine low and also reevaluate it in light of the other scores?\u201d The judge in question explains his rationale and either a retasting by all the judges ensues as a result of his concerns, or he agrees his initial assessment was low and states he will raise it to garner the wine a silver.<\/p>\n

The point in all this give and take is to ensure no one judge unduly influences a score and that each rated wine reflects the group\u2019s assessment.<\/p>\n

Often people will question the ability of anyone to taste so many wines in a single competition and still accurately identify winners and losers.\u00a0 But consider that none of the wines are consumed; all tastings are spit into cups before proceeding to the next wine.\u00a0 And any given judge will taste about 140 wines—or 25%—not all 564 entries.\u00a0 Spreading the wealth over all nineteen judges maintains the integrity of their palates.<\/p>\n

Moreover, crackers, thin slices of roast beef and olives are available to clear the palate.\u00a0 Olives are particularly good at removing the tannins left behind during red wine tasting.\u00a0 Additionally, lunch breaks are ninety minutes long and significantly refresh the palate.<\/p>\n

Easing up<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>On the evening of the first day\u2019s evaluations all of the judges and wine competition management and their spouses were hosted at an upscale restaurant for dinner.\u00a0 Conversations, wine related and not, enlivened the evening and forged further camaraderie among the group.<\/p>\n

The next morning the entire cast reassembled for a continuation of the tastings.\u00a0 The morning session went briskly and by noon the last of the flights had been judged and lunch was served in the Regency\u2019s Club dining room.\u00a0 At 1:45, the highlight of the competition was conducted back in the tasting room.\u00a0 It was time to select the \u201cBest of Show\u201d; the one wine that prevailed over all 564 submissions to be named the wine of wines.<\/p>\n

The process took additional time to stage since each judge had to have glasses of each wine awarded a Best of Category status staged at their seat.\u00a0 Then the doors of the tasting swung open and the judges took their places before the arrayed \u201cMagnificent 15\u201d.<\/p>\n

The objective here was as simple as it was elegant.\u00a0 Evaluate and select the top five wines out of the 15 in order of preference.\u00a0 Reds and whites competed together for the first time.\u00a0 The judges were looking for simply the best wine in the house.\u00a0 After thirty minutes of careful evaluation, five glasses were tightly grouped before each magistrate along with a sheet ranking their selections #1 through #5. \u00a0A\u00a0tally of the sheets by the\u00a0competition\u00a0management identified the winner.<\/p>\n

At this point, the inner sanctum of the wine steward\u2019s room was opened to all.\u00a0 Participants were invited to taste whatever wines they desired directly from bottles they had been evaluating over the last two days; prior to this point no one knew what wineries had chosen to participate in the competition.\u00a0 For a list of all the judges and award winning wines visit the ASWA<\/span><\/span> <\/a>web site.<\/p>\n

On October 13, the Association will hold an awards ceremony on Capitol Hill under the auspices of the Congressional Wine Caucus showcasing this year\u2019s winners. The winning wines are then normally presented at the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in Sacramento,CA and other national wine consumer events.\"\"<\/p>\n

East Coast wines are increasingly being recognized nationally for their quality. The ascendency of these regional wines is driven in large part by the recognition provided by the Atlantic Seaboard Wine Association. It is the objective of the ASWA to promote the East Coast as a quality wine producing region.<\/p>\n

May the association live long and prosper.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
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Published in the Fall 2011 edition of the Piedmont Virginian<\/em> magazine.<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

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Understanding How the Best Wines in a Competition Become Medalists\u00a0 The room is hushed.\u00a0 Nineteen men and women at four tables labor over several glasses of wine placed in front of each of them.\u00a0 The only sound is sniff and sip, followed by murmurs of quiet conversation.\u00a0 After two days and 109 individual flights—comprising 564 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[391,45,390,387,16,389,50,392,388],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n