Vintage 2025: A Plan to Save Wine Competitions

Inauguration Day. And still, Donald J. Trump has not called. Despite the fury with which he stocked his pending administration with colorful characters, he has yet to give me a ring.

And if there is anything this country needs right now, it is a “Wine Czar.”

I will not go into my qualifications to fill such a post, but I will point to one urgent segment of what would be my agenda, should I be tapped. Let us call it Vintage 2025, a sweeping proposal to lift the nation’s wine trade from its current stagnation.

I would start by restoring reliability and significance to the commercial wine competition. My 10 steps would resurrect what has become a curious sideshow in the wine business, despite the long, beneficial and honorable role that wine competitions have played in advising both vintners and consumers of wines worth emulating and drinking:

Restore competition panels to five people each

The prevailing standard is three persons per panel, a cutback that competition directors have adopted over the past couple of decade to save costs, speed deliberations, and bolster revenues.

Five-person panels, however, provide a broader mix of experience, knowledge, and perspective, especially when a panel includes a winemaker, a wine educator, a wine retailer, a sommelier, and a wine writer, or similar composition. Five-person panels better ensure that each wine gets a fair and thorough shake. With more palates in play, an insensitivity by one judge, such as a high threshold for detecting, say, Brettanomyces, will be compensated by a neighboring judge with a low threshold for Brett.

A broad blend of five persons per panel used to be routine; not so much today, with few competitions continuing the practice.

Also, wine competitions, especially those that draw entries from throughout the world, would benefit by inviting judges from other countries, and having them sit on panels that would include entries from his or her country, thereby bringing to deliberations more experienced perspectives. Some international competitions routinely do this; others should be encouraged to follow suit.

Bottom line: The more voices in play when entries are reviewed, the more grounded and meaningful the conclusions.

Impose a limit on the proportion of gold medals

For decades, the prevailing thinking among competition directors has been that if you award more gold medals, you generate more entries for the next go-around, which means more revenue and more prestige.

That may have worked at one time, but no more. By and large, competitions are not drawing as many entries as they used to, and one reason is that the significance of a gold medal has been diluted by so many being handed out.

Why not impose a limit, say no more than five percent of the total number of entries (currently, around 10 percent of entries routinely win gold medals)?

A lid on the proportion of gold medals a competition awards would enhance the significance of a gold medal, and might even help generate entries, as winemakers recognize just how valuable a gold medal would be from such a stingy competition.

Enhance the education of judges

Competitions could boost their relevance by training and mentoring not only seasoned judges but an entirely new community of judges, and thereby cultivate more diversified panels with respect to age, race, gender, region, and experience.

The California State Fair commercial wine competition offers judges an educational seminar on the eve of each judging, and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo international wine competition requires judges to attend a briefing on rules and standards before judges convene.

For the most part, however, wine competitions solicit the same judges year after year without either helping polish their skills or looking to the future by folding new perspectives and new personalities onto panels. There could be an opportunity here for universities with professors and students deep into sensory science to help develop potential judges and to keep regular judges on the circuit up to speed on the latest scientific discoveries concerning the evaluation of wine. (The California State Fair, with the University of California, Davis, Extension Service, already supports an “advanced tasting seminar” to help judges refine their palates and to train prospective judges.)

Require transparency

Almost without exception, wine competitions do a poor job of explaining what they do and how they do it.

For one, they could reveal just how their conclusions are reached. All sorts of ways to explain this in a lively, entertaining way are available – I am thinking social media. Spell out for consumers the rigor that competitions typically expect of judges, such as the measures they take to help assure that palates remain astute.

But also compel competition directors to provide a breakdown of the final voting tabulations for high awards; few do, raising suspicions, perhaps unfounded, but maybe not, on whether any sleight-of-hand tweaking of votes has taken place behind the scenes.

What’s more, competitions should spell out their total revenues each year, and how their expenses break down; what are the costs and who or what is benefiting financially from wine competitions?

Wine competitions generally are so lucrative that their profits often provide benefits for organizations, programs and events that may be unrelated to wine, such as events at county fairs. Winery principals and wine enthusiasts, however, are likely to be completely unaware of these benefits. In addition to frequently underwriting events at sponsoring fairs, profits from competitions finance college scholarships, support organizations like FFA and 4-H, and the like. Some competitions, however, do not do this at all, or at least do not publicly reveal where the money goes.

Several years ago, a large wine competition provided me with a rough breakdown of three years of revenues and expenses. It was instructive in several respects. The competition lost money one year and realized about $17,000 in profits each of the other two. Yearly revenues ranged from $141,000 to $167,000, with salaries and “professional services” (computer programming, chief judge, catering) accounting for around half its expenses. Honorariums for judges accounted for another 14 percent of each year’s operating costs.

Keep in mind that wine competitions almost without exception rely on volunteers to do much of the work involved in a competition – organizing classes, delivering flights, tabulating results, washing glasses, dumping buckets, and so on. Not exactly the glamorous side of wine competitions, but many volunteers return year after year and complete their chores promptly and cheerily, all without compensation other than some leftover wine.

Wine competitions often are dismissed by critics as little more than a lucrative cottage industry for the people who run them, so thorough, impartial disclosure of revenues, expenses, and profits could help enhance their standing.

Market results better

Wine competitions put much effort into soliciting entries, not near as much into promoting results. They let winning wineries know of awards they have received, but by and large do a comparably weak job in letting consumers know results and what they mean.

There are exceptions, such as the special newspaper section and the public tasting that traditionally follows the San Francisco Chronicle wine competition, and wine gardens at this and that exposition after a judging, but too many others leave it to consumers to dig out results on their own.

Virtually every wine competition has a website, but results only occasionally are posted and promoted quickly and extensively.

Limit the number of wines each judge tastes on any given day

The common practice is to expect judges to taste 70 to 130 wines a day, despite widely recognized concerns that alcohol, tannins, acidity and so forth from tasting so many wines fatigue the palates of judges and affects their evaluations, even if they spit consistently.

A few competitions have taken steps in recent years to help judges avoid exhaustion, such as reducing class sizes, alternating classes of red, pink, and white wines, laying out extensive and varied spreads of palate cleansers, and providing long and relaxing breaks between sessions. That has been helpful, but a more stringent limit on the overall number of wines to be judged in a day – say 50 – would help enhance the significance of results.

Organize wine classes by place of origin

The connection between where a wine’s grapes are grown and how the wine represents that place long has accounted for the enduring allure of wine, aside from the pleasure wine provides. It is why the European wine trade has an historically rigid system of appellations of origin (Champagne, for one example), and why the United States has created its network of American Viticultural Areas (Napa Valley, as another example).

Yet, almost without exception, wine competitions do not break down classes by region. Consequently, judges are likely to sit down to a flight of Chardonnays that includes entries from Chile, New York, and California, with no clue where each originated. This makes no sense in view of the crucial tie between place and wine.

In a competition, California Chardonnays should be grouped exclusively in one class, Chilean Chardonnays in another, and so forth. Such classes could be further delineated, such as dividing California Chardonnays into classes representing specifically Russian River Valley, Anderson Valley, Sonoma Coast and so forth.

But might such a classification bias judges, as when an entire class consists of Cabernet Sauvignons from a highly regarded American Viticultural Area like Napa Valley’s Stag’s Leap District? Not if judges aren’t told place of origin until after they complete their deliberations.

Some wine competitions just naturally are based on place of origin. These typically are smaller competitions where entries are limited to a single county, like Lake County, or a single appellation, like Sierra Foothills. Over the years, I have come to see results from such smaller regional competitions as more meaningful than results from larger competitions that do not base classes on place, though the larger competitions are the ones that get the most media exposure.

Similarly, competitions should occasionally fold into a class of wines a comparable wine from a producer highly regarded for the style, but who routinely doesn’t enter competitions. These wines would be purchased by the competition without the involvement or knowledge of the producer. A couple of competitions have done this over the years, motivated in large part by curiosity about how some of the world’s more prestigious wines would perform in a field of entries with lower profiles.

Go green

In short, cut out the waste. Wine competitions customarily use reams of paper and buckets of ink to provide judges with scoring sheets. Sometimes, an entire sheet of paper will be given over to a class of wines with just two or three entries. Not long ago, I judged 142 wines in a one-day competition; I returned home with 21 sheets of paper, each with printing on just one side.

On the other hand, the recent inaugural Vine-2-Wine competition of the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo provided each judge with an electronic tablet with which to record the opening day’s scores and comments, an experiment that worked so well in cutting down paperwork that it warrants continuation and emulation.

Kick in a few bucks for judges

If wine judges are paid, it is usually a modest honorarium, $100 or so for a one-day competition. (The size of a competition has nothing to do with how much it offers, if anything; the small one-day Amador County Fair commercial wine competition pays each judge $150.)

Often, there is no compensation. Judges only rarely complain about that. By and large, they join a panel out of curiosity, to learn from their fellow panelists, to contribute to the wine scene or a worthy cause, to hang out with people whose company they enjoy, and to discover intriguing wines, about which they may write or order for wine shop or restaurant. Beyond that, their reward could be a gift of a monogrammed polo shirt, cutting board or blanket. The San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, held in Sonoma County each winter, is famous for outfitting judges with enough cold-weather attire – jackets, hoodies, vests – for a trek to Antarctica.

Wine competitions generally cover travel, meal, and lodging expenses for judges, but some don’t. Some uniformity would be nice, starting with reasonable travel, meal, and lodging costs. If that were assured, most judges would not lobby for even a $100 honorarium, but that also would be considerate and welcome.

Better assure consumers of a competition’s integrity

Wine competitions should randomly pick and scientifically analyze a high-award wine alongside a sample of the same wine bought retail.

Such an independent audit will help assure consumers that a highly honored wine they buy is the same wine that won the award.

Vintners rarely enter a “ringer” or “show wine” in a competition, but suspicions have arisen often enough that any competition that announces beforehand that it would audit at least one or two high-award winners would help assure that it does not happen at all. (The California State Fair commercial wine competition already does this, its guidebook noting that “any wine winning a high award may be tested at a qualified lab to certify that it meets the information on the entry form and is identical to the wine for sale to the public.”)

Years ago, in a New Zealand competition, organizers subsequently did find a discrepancy in the composition of a high-award wine compared with samples of the purported same wine on the market.

One account said the wine that won the award came from a batch of 2228 cases, whereas the total production of the wine was more than 100,000 cases, meaning consumers had only one-in-a-45 chance of buying the honored wine, the award for which subsequently was withdrawn.

Wine competitions also could require wineries to specify on entry forms just how many bottles of each entered wine was made. If it is a small batch – say a tenth of so of a wine’s total production – entry forms should have that information, which then could be relayed to consumers if the wine wins a high honor.

Sometimes, much of a wine labeled and sold as if it was all from the same tank is a blend of wines from different regions and different vats, bottled on days far apart. For such wines, winemakers may strive for a single consistent style, but they may miss, which helps account for why some people – even judges – will subsequently taste a gold-medal wine and wonder how in the world it got such an award.

It is up to competition directors and winemakers to produce a standard that spells out that a high-award wine comes from one single and identical run. This will help assure consumers that a wine they buy based on its performance at a competition mirrors the wine that was considered for the award. (The California State Fair, again, alerts prospective competitors that each entry “must be part of a single lot of at least 300 gallons of identically finished wine.”)

Also helpful would be a line on entry forms that states whether the wine is available for anyone to buy at the winery and through standard distribution channels, or is available only to wine-club members, restaurants or the like. Thus, consumers would be saved the chore of trying to chase down a lauded wine that they have little chance of securing through routine outlets.

The Decanter World Wine Awards in London goes one step further, noting that if “any major discrepancies” are found between a wine’s retail price on the entry form and the price of the wine in shops afterwards, its award could be withdrawn. This is a step toward discouraging producers from inflating the price of a wine after it wins a prestigious award, something that rarely happens, but it has.

Sounds like a reasonable requirement that could be imported by wine competitions in the U.S. if they have not already imposed such a standard.

In conclusion, wine competitions can perform a valuable service, though consumers also must keep in mind that wine is a continually evolving wonder, and may not express itself the same from one day to the next, helping account for how a single release can win a high honor in one competition but get shut out in another. However, if competition directors want to remain germane for vintners and consumers alike, they have at their disposal numerous measures for improving their reliability and relevance.