A funny thing happened in between June 28th when word first hit that the ’05 Charles Shaw Chardonnay won a Double Gold medal at the California State Fair wine competition and July 12th when names of the rest of the winners were officially released. First, the wine blogosphere was completely atwitter with incredulity, but secondarily nobody, to my knowledge, has looked at the full results in order to do analysis and call an additional comeuppance on Charles Shaw.
Perhaps because no ‘just desserts’ are coming.
I won’t do too much of a re-hash of the blogosphere posts, but there were plenty of them on all sides of the issue. I will, however, note that I staked my position out—these wine competitions are as valid as any other means of subjective wine evaluation.
Others like Tim at Winecast and Jim at Wine Enthusiasts’ wine blog gave very reasoned analysis on how these sorts of Double Gold anomalies might occur.
I’m going to throw out another theory and it has nothing to do with the palate fatigue, batch variation or potential incompetence of the judges.
Hear me out for a second as I get to my point.
First, if you look at the full results you’ll see that not only did Charles Shaw win, but a load of other grocery store wines were extremely well scored. To summarize a few of them, consider the following (to see the full results click here):
Double Gold (Score of 98) 2006 3 Blind Moose Pinot Grigio; $9.99
Double Gold (Score 98) 2004 Barefoot Cellars Reserve Merlot; $18.00
Double Gold (Score 98) 2005 Five Rivers Winery Cabernet Sauvignon; $9.99
Double Gold (Score 98) 2005 Hey Mambo Sultry Red; $10.99
Double Gold (Score 98) 2005 Napa Ridge Winery Sauvignon Blanc; $12.99
Not only did Charles Shaw Chard win a Double Gold, Franzia scored another coup when his Napa Ridge winery scored a Double Gold. And, there are a ton of examples of wines like Black Mountain (Trader Joe’s), Fetzer and Fish Eye winning golds, silvers, etc.
Ponder that for a second—any consumer in the country can pick up all five of the above listed Double Golds at a grocery store. No boutique wineries crafting small lots for a careful list of allocated wine customers; these are big brands with high production and massive national geographic distribution.
Simply put, the theories posited by others regarding the fallibility of the Charles Shaw win don’t hold water based on the baseline of other national brands also winning.
It may be useful to check out the judging criteria (Pages 11 -23 at this link).
The California State Fair wine competition judges wines over the course of three days—all judges are selected and thought to have a professional palate i.e. no hacks, please.
They employ the “Peterson Method.” The wines are brought to the judge’s table in flights of 25 to 50 wines, depending on the varietal and the number of wines entered. Four judges per panel will first smell a wine, and then arrange it into 3 categories according to each judge’s criteria. The judge then re-smells the wines in each category and places them in a “ranking” order. The wines are then tasted and rearranged again in a “ranking” order and awards are given.
In regards to scoring, judges are encouraged to give a plus or minus score to each wine aware (for example: a silver +). Each of the awards is given a numeric score for each of the four judges on a panel, added together, divided by the number of members of the panel and given a final numeric score.
If all judges on a panel decide to give a particular wine a gold medal, the wine will be elevated to Double Gold status.
So, here’s my theory on why grocery store wines are winning.
You know how in the Olympic gymnastic competitions from the 70s and early 80s, the eastern european gymnasts used to demonstrate little personality, military precision and technical perfection? And, they won gold medals.
I think this wine judging, in this format, with this number of entries is the same way. By having the criteria be blind-tasting/smell, categorize, smell, rank, taste, final rank the judging is set-up to reward technically perfect wines.
In my opinion, this judging style holds little regard for a wine that shows the slightest bit of immediate reticence or incorrigibility.
Who makes absolutely technically correct wines? Who ensures that the nose is present, that acids, tannins and fruit are harmonious, without being offensive? Big wine companies do. When you’re tasting blind, and you’re tasting a large quantity of wine, the winner is almost assuredly not going to be the wine with a big personality, a bright smile, a joie de vivre, nor a repressed past, but a hopeful future.
The winner is going to be the wine that is the least offensive. The winner will be the Russian gymnast. Technically perfect. Devoid of any emotion, an unblinking machine, but technically perfect.
To test this theory, I picked up a bottle of the Five Rivers Cabernet—the Double Gold medal winner. You know what? After just 10 minutes in the glass this was a very nice wine—much nicer than many Cabs. I’ve had at quadruple the price. It’s technically perfect. It’s not going to draw me into ponderous introspection, but then that’s not the point.
What is the point? What if Fred Franzia is right when he says that no wine is worth more than $10 a bottle?