Show Pony

A received an e-mail from a winemaker that I know reasonably well, asking for my opinion, and as the questions and points he raised in his e-mail were interesting, I thought I would share both the e-mail and my response with you.

Here is what he said. “I went along to the Adelaide Show tasting yesterday to see how one of my wines went and to taste a dozen or two.

I was a little disappointed to see that we had drawn a blank but a little study of the results proved interesting.  The following is just six of the wines in the same class as my 2003 that also got zip:

2003 Penfolds RWT

2003 Wirra Wirra RSW

2003 Rosemount Balmoral

2003 Eileen Hardy

2003 Yalumba Octavius

2003 Seppelt St Peters

It looks like I am in pretty good company.

At the other end of the scale, gold medals were awarded to the 2003 Ingoldby Golden Vines Reserve Shiraz and the 2003 Casella Estate Icon Shiraz.  It is my policy to not comment unfavourably on specific wines but I can tell you that having tasted some of the winners and some of the losers I came away totally mystified.  In fact, one of the wines that got a silver medal finished so short that I suffered a whiplash injury to my neck!

The "Judges Remarks" on the class were interesting - "The 03's were not an inspiring bunch" and "The 04's lacked mid palate depth and flavour length".  We are talking about the two current vintages of our flagship variety, Aussie Shiraz that is recognised globally as right up there, and here are our judges describing two years work by some of our finest winemakers as crap.  What the **** is going on?

I would be interested in your thoughts.”

In order to answer this question properly, it's important for readers to understand the background to the history and evolution of wine shows in Australia. The show judging system has been going for as long as we have been seriously making wine in Australia. It certainly has a long and proud history, starting life as part of the Agricultural Societies’ shows. The shows were originally designed so that winemakers would be able to obtain impartial, independent feedback on their wine and would give the winemakers an opportunity to see what other winemakers were doing; an admirable initiative.

In the intervening years, the primary motivation driving the shows has changed and it is now much more about a marketing opportunity than anything else. Recently, on the radio I heard an advertisement for a winery that had very cleverly tied together sports medals and the fact that their wine had also been awarded medals. If you were to ask ten wine drinkers what the gold medal meant, nine of them would probably tell you that it was, singularly the best wine in its particular "event." The vast majority of wine drinkers think that only one gold, one silver and one bronze are awarded in each "race" and have no idea that multiple medals can be awarded in each class and that the awarding of medals are based on points and not first “past the post.”

This widely held misconception amongst wine drinkers is pumped for all it's worth by the wine industry marketing and sales people. Medals and trophies sell wine and as long as this remains the status quo, the industry will continue to pump the show system for all it's worth. According to this link there are over 50 wine shows a year in Australia today. How many thousands of medals and trophies that he equates to is anybody's guess, but the number will be very substantial.

Each show system judge rates the wines out of twenty; three points are awarded for appearance, seven points for aroma, and ten points for taste and overall impression. There is nothing unusual in judges having to work through 200 wines in the day. To put that in perspective, assuming a seven hour working day, that's almost 30 wines per hour; or one wine every two minutes! Naturally enough, almost all wine judges work in the industry and many of them are indeed winemakers themselves: and just as different winemakers make different styles of wine, as judges they have their own unique tastes, personal prejudices, likes and dislikes and skill levels. These are just some of the factors that influence the results, and there are so many more that it is almost impossible to list them all.

The judges will receive instructions from the Chief Judge, and in some cases, the Chief Judge has an enormous influence on the style of wines awarded medals in the shows and those that are "also rans.” In the early 1980s, many of the wines made in Australia were frankly lean and green, yet many of these wines were still awarded medals in shows. At that time, many Australian wine makers were trying to emulate European wines and what's more, that aim was firmly supported and pushed in the show ring.

The phrase "the inmates running the asylum" comes to mind and whilst it may seem harsh, in some ways it's true. Unfortunately as things stand today, with the ludicrous nature of the whole show system, there is no alternative unless the whole shooting match is virtually scrapped and rebuilt from scratch.

As far as what judges look for, whilst they have scoring criteria, the implementation of the assessment of that criterion is influenced by many factors. In the 80’s they were looking for European elegance and in the 90’s huge amounts of oak seem to play a primary role. So in the space of 10 years, the highly desirable wine style has gone from one extreme to the other. Simply put, if a wine maker is "doing his own thing year in and year out, without being influenced by trends" if what is being produced is "in vogue" the wines may be highly awarded, but if those same wines are seen to be "out of fashion" they will be passed over on the show circuit.

The wines are the same; the only thing that is changing is the goal posts.

For a variety of reasons, some wines score well in wine shows and some don't. Just because the wine does not show well in the show, does not mean it is a bad wine, far from it. Take a wine that is reasonably refined, showing some elegance, and is impeccably balanced. Imagine it in a line-up of wines that seem to be either bigger and bolder or possibly up against wines with a seductive, silky mouth feel. The judge has tried 159 wines when he hits the “elegant one” - what is the chance of this wine doing well? None!  (Unless elegance and balance is exactly what the judge is looking for).

Age is another consideration; frequently high-quality wines that have been built with long term ageing in mind will not show as well as a wine that is either ready to be consumed now, or has been built for short to medium term cellaring.

Then we have the completely ludicrous situation of wine that has not been bottled and is still essentially a work in progress being entered in wine shows. The Jimmy Watson Trophy is the biggest example of this utter farce. Can you imagine the Archibald painting competition being awarded for an unfinished portrait, or the Booker Prize being awarded for a book that was three quarters complete? I think not, yet the wine industry does it all the time.

If that is not bad enough, there are some wineries that virtually deliberately craft wine entries as "show ponies" in a hope of picking up a swag of medals to assist in their marketing efforts. As an aside, recently the rules in relation to the use of medals have changed which stop wineries from using medals in a misleading fashion.

Now if you think that wineries wouldn't do this sort of thing, don't kid yourself, that's why the rules had to change. Whilst on the subject of misleading practices, some wineries (and admittedly it's a small percentage) do enter either wines from their best barrels, or tricked up samples; obviously these wines are better than those available to the general public. In some of the better wine shows, exhibitors are told their submitted samples may be checked against those commercially available, and it is interesting to see that some wines are "withdrawn" prior to judging taking place. Whilst these shonky practices are probably a small percentage of the wines judged, they do occur and discredit the system as well as the reputable producers.

When examining wine show results, the keen observer will often find a particular wine may win a gold medal in say three shows and not rate in another half a dozen. Does that mean the three gold medals were wrong, or did the judges in the six shows where the wine was not awarded a medal get it wrong?

Unfortunately there is no answer to this question and it all boils down to the vagaries of a system that is far from perfect and has come an enormous way from being a system which was designed to provide winemakers with “constructive feedback.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, many of the wine shows are basically a crap shoot, you win some and you lose some.