In keeping with livestock-show tradition, Rodeo Uncorked!, the international wine competition of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, comes down to one Grand Champion Best of Show and one Reserve Grand Champion Best of Show, terms as involved and fancy as a hand-tooled saddle, the shorthand being first place and second place, respectively.

As a member of the nine-person panel to weigh in on the 49 finalists in the last roundup after 122 judges had evaluated 2,876 wines over three days, I am happy with the two top wines and feel confident in predicting that anyone who buys them will be delighted with what they get. They survived a rigorous process under the steely eye of representatives of the auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, passing through an intense if calmly paced series of blind tastings to qualify for final consideration.

Working independently, with no discussion among us, the sweepstakes judges ranked our top 10 wines by preference, and from those calculations emerged the competition’s top six wines, which also included Top Value Wine, Top Red Wine, Top White Wine, and Top Dessert Wine.

The Grand Champion Best of Show award went to Champagne Bollinger Special Cuvée Brut Champagne ($75), a sleek, slyly complicated, mineral-driven, persistent Champagne whose riveting beads of bubbles were fine and spirited. Fourteen sparkling wines were among the final 49, and the Bollinger was among my top 10 of all wines. (I did, however, rank a little higher another Champagne, the Pommery Brut Royal ($60), which while less pronounced in aroma nonetheless represented more dramatically the drive, richness and elegance for which Champagne long has been recognized.)

The Reserve Grand Champion Best of Show award went to the Markham Vineyards 2021 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($49), which by today’s Napa Valley pricing is a rare bargain for its clear representation of the cherry and olive shadings of Cabernet Sauvignon, speaking more to elegance and balance than muscle and power.

I especially liked a few other wines in the final round, most memorably the Schloss Vollrads 2022 Rheingau Trocken Dry Risling ($30), all peach, petrol and power; the robust and grippy Castello di Monsanto Il Poggio 2017 Chianti Classico Gran Selezione ($110); the fragrant, fulsome, and firm Pasqua Mai Dire 2013 Mai Amarone della Valpolicella ($110); and the Fukucho “Moon in the Water” Junmai Ginjo Hiroshima Prefecture Sake ($40), a sake whose pristine purity and sublime suggestions of citrus and spice will inspire anyone who never has written a poem to take up pen and start a haiku involving ponds and pines.

The Top Value wine was a familiar Sacramento-area wine, the Bogle Family Vineyards 2021 California Cabernet Sauvignon ($11). (Wines in contention for Top Value must be priced $15 or less.) The win means that Bogle tasting-room personnel will take delivery of a handsome saddle, one of which is awarded each of the competition’s 13 highest scoring wineries and wines.

Three other California wineries will be saddling up:

Barlow Vineyards for its 2018 Napa Valley Calistoga Cabernet Sauvignon ($70), which while plenty juicy is so solid with tannins it had best be locked in the cellar for another five to 10 years, Top Red Wine.

Krutz Family Cellars for its 2022 Santa Lucia Highlands Soberanes Vineyard Chardonnay ($65), a massive, heavily oaked take on the variety, Top White Wine.

Valley Floor Vineyard for its seamless and herbal 2015 Napa Valley Calistoga Single Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ($175), Top Region Wine. (Each year, Rodeo Uncorked! highlights a particular winemaking region from around the world, and this year it was Napa County. Of  the nearly 3000 wines in the competition, 314 were from Napa County. (Texas wineries entered 558 wines.)

Your correspondent at the outset of the final best-of-show roundup.

Other takeaways:

Our opening-day panel was assigned the class of “oaked” Chardonnays priced $13 to $15, a popular niche for folks who like their Chardonnay soft, sweet and oaky, the kind of Chardonnay not likely to interrupt the conversations of people at tailgate parties and art openings. They are simple Chardonnays, generally unchallenging and refreshing, often too heavy on the wood for my taste but they do have an appreciative audience. We fell into that company, awarding gold medals to 11 of the 33 entries, an unusually high proportion for any class of wine at a competition. The Class Champion was the invitingly bouncy Josh Cellars 2023 California Craftsman’s Collection Chardonnay, not to be confused with the more widely available Josh Cellars 2023 California Chardonnay, which while rich with sweet fruit didn’t measure up to the Craftsman’s in elegance and length, though it also was awarded a gold medal. Our Reserve Class Champion was a surprise, the fat and lumbering Icon Rock Everyday Wines 2022 Mendoza Chardonnay (popular along the East Coast but probably difficult to find hereabouts), a surprise because Argentina’s Mendoza is more recognized for red wine, Malbec especially, than white wine.

We followed that class with one of the more peculiar classes of the event, “Piedmonte Red Varieties, excluding Nebbiolo, $46 and below.” In other words, Barbera and Dolcetto from anyplace in the world, not necessarily Italy. It turned out to be the most surprising and enlightening class of the day. Of the 17 entries, eight won gold, again, a high proportion. All the golds went to Barberas, four from Texas, three from Italy, one from California – the Barons Creek Vineyards 2022 Lodi Barbera ($42), an unusual take on the variety for its Beaujolais-like jauntiness, thread of mulchy earthiness and long finish. Our Class Champion was the lively and spicy Peters Prairie 2019 Texas Hill Country Barbera ($32), which went on to gather enough votes to be crowned the Top Texas Wine in the competition, a surprise, given that Texas and Barbera rarely are mentioned in the same breath. Our Reserve Class Champion was the inky and supple Tenuta Rocca 2021 Barbera d’Alba ($25).

Rodeo Uncorked! likes to be inventive. This year, at the outset of each day’s judging, judges were given a menu with which they were to order their preferred palate cleansers.

Of all the red wines made in Texas, Tempranillo generates the most buzz for its potential, generally backed up by how it performs at competitions. Rodeo Uncorked! reaffirmed that confidence. We were assigned the class of solely Texan Tempranillos and Tempranillo-based blends priced $40 and above. We pondered 23 of them, and gave 11 gold medals, most from Texas High Plains, a 12,000-square-mile American Viticultural Area around Lubbock along the southwestern edge of the state’s panhandle. Our Class Champion was the Pedernales Cellars 2020 Texas High Plains Reserve Tempranillo ($50), which for its noble bearing, ticklish spice, and resonating red fruit initially won a rare double-gold medal from our panel, meaning all five judges concurred that it deserved gold, no debate necessary. Our Reserve Class Champion was the M3 Cellars 2021 Texas High Plains Tempranillo, light in color but juicy with suggestions of cherries (I’ve had no luck finding the price for this wine).

Among white wines, Texas winemakers are as enthusiastic about Viognier’s prospects as they are about Tempranillo among reds. We were assigned a class of 14 Viogniers priced $29 to $50. In that price range, I expect some drama among the candidates, regardless of source, but there wasn’t much. We gave just two gold medals, with one ending up our Class Champion – the hefty Dry Comal Creek Vineyards 2023 Texas High Plains Viognier ($32) – and the other our Reserve Class Champion – the Bricoleur Vineyards 2023 Sonoma County Fountaingrove District Kick Ranch Vineyard Viognier ($40), a lean, forward, elegant take on the variety, capturing all the fresh honeysuckle and peach the variety can deliver when grown in the right place. Given that 13 of the 14 entries were from Texas, the state’s vintners may want to shift their focus to the prospects of another white wine, Blanc de Bois, an American hybrid widely cultivated in Texas but grown hardly anyplace else. But to be fair, grape growing in Texas is as risky as riding a bull, with drought, freeze, disease and bugs threatening to throw a disproportionate number of vintages out of contention, so don’t count out Viognier yet.

Our final class on the second day of the competition was one of those groups that judges hope they are given – Cabernet Sauvignon priced $80 to $100. We sat down to 45 of them, and awarded 15 golds, 11 of which – big surprise here – came from Napa Valley. (One each was from Sonoma/Napa and Paso Robles.) It was a strong collection, showing an overall dialing back in ripeness, alcohol and wood that came to stand for Cabernet Sauvignon over the past couple of decades, especially in Napa Valley. In short, they showed more freshness, balance, layering and varietal integrity. Our Class Champion was the Triple Seven Cellars 2022 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (another wine for which I could not find a price). The Reserve Class Champion was the Adobe Road Winery 2021 Napa/Sonoma Blue Dog Cabernet Sauvignon ($88), a robust yet seamless take that Cabernet Sauvignon enthusiasts will love for its ripeness and generous exploitation of oak.

Other high-end Cabernets that I especially liked and which tend to be available hereabouts, making them potential gifts during the year-end holidays, were the sassy yet refined Goldschmidt Vineyards 2021 Oakville Game Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon ($95), the inky yet lean and lyrical Jayson 2021 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($100), the cheery and cherry-limned Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 2021 Napa Valley Artemis Cabernet Sauvignon ($85), the blustery Fairwinds Estate Winery Yellowstone 2019 Napa Valley “1883 Bison Reserve” Cabernet Sauvignon ($95), judged the best red wine at last month’s Vine-2-Wine, the inaugural international wine competition of the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, and the Niner Wine Estates 2021 Paso Robles Willow Creek District Heart Hill Vineyard Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon ($95), such a complete and authoritative Cabernet Sauvignon that I speculated in my notes that it must come from Napa Valley’s Howell Mountain. Wrong!

Rodeo Uncorked! is prelude to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, the next iteration of which starts March 4 and continues to March 23, during which many of the competition’s award-winning wines will be poured at the exposition’s wine garden (at the end of this year’s show, 18 tons of wine bottles from the garden were recycled). Even before the show and rodeo, wines will be highlighted at a “Best Bites” culinary competition Feb. 23 and a wine auction March 2. Wine was introduced to the series of livestock-show events two decades ago. Since its start in 1932, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo has raised $600 million to help underwrite educational opportunities for Texas youths. Last year’s wine auction alone generated enough in sales for 35 scholarships valued at $20,000 each, said rodeo officials.

To find a copy of my book “The Signature Wines of Superior California: 50 Wines that Define the Sierra Foothills, the Delta, Yolo and Lodi,” please visit my website SignatureWines.us.