Inside Wine Judging
Courtesy of
30 Second Wine Advisor
By
Robin GarrAs I write this, I'm flying home from a quick
five-day trip to Siena, Italy, where I had the pleasure of
participating in a judging panel at "VII Selezione dei Vini di
Toscana" - the major biennial competition for Tuscan wines. I know
I'm not going to have much luck convincing most of you that judging
wine in high-level competition is really hard work, but it is. No,
seriously. I'm not kidding about this.
Let me assure you that there's no party atmosphere about this
activity, even though 1,064 bottles of wine would be opened and
judged during the 2 1/2-day competition. For today's article, I
thought you might be interested in a quick inside look at how a
fairly typical large wine competition works.
Judging took place in a large, brightly lighted meeting room at
the Hotel Garden near Siena, under analytical, almost
laboratory-like conditions, each judge parked at a small,
white-draped table, nine rows of seven tables each, lined up in
ranks and files very much like a classroom. A rule of silence is
rigorously enforced: Comments ranging from "Good juice!" to "Eeuuww"
might unfairly influence your neighbor's opinions.
That's not a trivial matter, as the competition is very serious
business. The wines that earn top honors gain more than mere
bragging rights but will gain international publicity that can
translate into a growing reputation, and sales.
Bread and water were available for palate-clearing, and every
judge was provided a supply of napkins and his own bucket (partly
filled with sand, a nice touch) for spitting. (Never mind manners -
you can't swallow even a little wine with every taste and expect to
remain unimpaired in a mass tasting like this.
Even with time out for a fair amount of ceremony (all of it in
Italian), not to mention lavish lunches and dinners that showcased
both typical and modern Tuscan dishes and, of course, more wine,
there was no real opportunity to get out and tour the beautiful
Tuscan countryside or historic and picturesque Siena. That was
definitely a downside. Still, I'd be fibbing if I denied that it was
fun, too, and an honor to be invited to judge.
Judges were drawn from an international panel of wine journalists
and sommeliers with experience in similar national-level
competitions. The sizable panel was mostly Italian, with a handful
of invited participants from other countries: wine writers Sally
Easton from the United Kingdom and Federico Oldemburg from Argentina
by way of Spain, enologist José Ma. Lez Secchi from Uruguay and a
few more.
Names for the nine "commissioni" (judging panels) were drawn from
fishbowls on the event's opening day to ensure a random
distribution.
Each seven-member panel comprised one journalist, one sommelier and
five enologists.
The 1,000-plus wines in competition were divided into 15
categories based on style, but wines from all the Tuscan wine
regions were presented together. In other words, young Brunello and
Chianti Classico could be presented in the same "flight" (and judges
wouldn't be told which were which) because they are both DOCG red
wines made from traditional grapes, but "Super Tuscans" with
non-traditional grapes like Cabernet or Merlot dominant were in a
different category.)
There was a total of five judging sessions, Friday afternoon and
Saturday and Sunday morning and afternoon, each divided into two
"flights" of, usually, 11 to 13 wines each. Each panel judged
different wines, poured one at a time by a hard-working squadron of
expert sommeliers; and the wines just kept on coming. Usually the
next wine was poured after just five minutes, and judges were under
some pressure - peer pressure, at least - to have their analysis and
rating of the previous wine done by then.
Wines judged flawed by cork taint or other individual-bottle
faults were replaced upon any judge's request. I didn't keep a
careful tally, but it seemed that close to one of the nine panels,
on average, called for a repour in every round, suggesting an
overall failure rate in the neighborhood of 10 percent.
To foster consistency, judges used a rigorous tasting form that
sorted out each wine by its appearance, aroma, flavor and overall
characteristics, much as many of us do for our own amusement when we
taste wines at home.
The forms yield scores on a 100-point scale, something I don't
usually do, with individual elements (like "limpidity," "hue" and
"intensity"
under "vision") evaluated separately, and the totals tallied by
computer. In a standard statistical procedure, the highest and
lowest score for each wine were discarded to minimize the effect of
idiosyncratic responses.
I assume it goes without saying that all wines were tasted
"blind,"
except for the wines' style category and vintage. Even at the end of
the competition, judges weren't informed of the results. We'll get
them by E-mail later, and I'll follow up with a brief report when
they come in.
For the United States, the Italian Trade Commission also plans a
news conference in New York City in December (I hope to be there) to
announce the results and, not coincidentally, to promote the winning
wines.
The competition was organized by the Region of Tuscany in
partnership with the Enoteca Italiana of Siena, the National Italian
Winemakers Association and the Italian Trade Commission.
Later this week, as soon as I can clean up and edit my scrawled
PDA notes, I'll publish my on-the-spot report on all the memorable
meals we had and the wines, from Tuscany and beyond, that went along
with them.
For further reading, the Italian Trade Commission's excellent
Website, www.ItalianMade.com,
offers brief, readable synopses of all the Italian wine regions ...
including Tuscany, of course.
The Enoteca Italiana site carries a lot of information about the
competition, but it's available only in Italian:
http://www.enoteca-italiana.it/selezione/ |
