Is it Duck, Turkey or Chicken?

Is it Duck, Turkey or Chicken? (20 September)

With almost all professionally run wine shows the only thing the public sees are the medals, and in some case the final score that was awarded to the wines. These scores are derived by a panel of (usually 3) judges who assess the wine and come to a conclusion about its attributes. It is the quality of these attributes that determines the score, the greater the attributes, the higher the score.

The Sydney International Wine Competition is unique in a number of ways. Firstly, it judges wine with food so judges are not just looking at the individual characteristics of the wine, they are also rating the wine on its ability to match up with a particular dish of food. The second great difference, and in this case the one that is the centre of this article, is that many of the judges comments on each wine, are published on the SIWC website.

For the 2006 competition there was a panel of 14 judges; over half of them are from overseas and four of them had the exalted qualification of Master of Wine. When you examine their resumes, you will see none of them look like Johnny come-lately lightweights. With a panel like that, readers would naturally expect some pretty consistent, high-quality judging.

According to their website, “Sydney International Wine Competition is principally aimed at helping wine consumers make more pleasing wine choices for their dining table. As such, we tend to favour including at least an equal number of 'Style' judges in our Panels. Style judges are expected to look beyond the technical aspects of how the grapes were grown and the winemaking processes to envisage how the wine will complement appropriate food. To avoid any risk of bias from "cellar palate", the majority of our judges are drawn mainly from the US, UK and New Zealand, with Australian judges in a minority.”

As I understand it, the chairman of judges determines the category that each wine will be placed in, and whilst some minor deviations may be expected, when I see the Elderton 2001 Ashmead (their Reserve) Cabernet Sauvignon and the Voyager Estate 2002 Cabernet Merlot placed in the “Lighter Body Dry Red” category I scratch my head wondering.

The appreciation of various aspects of wine is a very personal thing, and in many ways there is no such thing as right or wrong when it comes to personal likes and dislikes; however when it comes to the technical aspects of wine, certain standards should be easier to define. So if a wine is thin, lacking in fruit, overly acidic and has green, unripe tannins, most wine judges should be able to pick up these characteristics. However one judge’s “I love lots of oak” versus another judge’s “I hate lots of oak” is a different matter as to some extent, it's getting into the realms of personal likes and dislikes.

For most wine lovers, this becomes fairly confusing because which one of the wine judges is right and which one of them is wrong? In the oak question, as it is a matter of personal taste, the reality is that it doesn't really matter; the only factor that does matter is your ability to know which one of these two styles you are likely to enjoy. That is exactly why reading tasting notes is critical and why the scores can be damn near meaningless. Are you better off drinking a wine which you don't like that is rated at 95 points and has won a gold medal, or a wine that was rated at 87 points which you thoroughly enjoy?

When it comes to matching wine with food, the complexities and personal taste aspect become even greater, and whilst that does influence the food match, in reality it shouldn't make a great deal of difference to the structural characteristics of the wine, so it is interesting to note some of the conflicting comments made by the judges; at times you think they might have been drinking different wines.

For the purposes of this article, I went through the list of a hundred wines and picked eight of them at random across three red wine categories and extracted some of the conflicting comments to illustrate how we all perceive wine so differently. Whilst it is reasonable that people perceive a good wine and food match differently, pay particular attention to the structural aspects of the wines, and the conflicting comments on these attributes (which I have highlighted in bold text). (Ed: The rest of the text is as published by SIWC, including any grammatical and spelling oddities.)

ELDERTON ASHMEAD SINGLE VINEYARD CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2001

Kym Milne
Complex, gamey, fairly extracted wine with dry tannins. A dense, quite stern wine. It looked a little bit better with the food.

Christian Maier
Enticing nose of ripe blackberry, cassis and leafy blueberries. Gentle, soft palate

Philip Reedman
Sweet mint and cassis aroma. It’s a very well structured wine. Firmly tannined. A nice, long finish. It’s a good wine. Curiously, this didn’t work with the food. The wine is in fact better without the food.

HOWARD PARK LESTON CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2003

Mark de Vere
Very ripe, jammy. Slightly attenuated. Thin, sour, harsh tannin but a long finish. Even with food, somewhat harsh, somewhat thin. Not very nice.

Christian Maier
Layered, mint, cassis, eucalypt and tobacco aromas in the nose followed by an elegant, subtle fruit with plenty of talent to keep freshness and elegance. Would offer a good support to many food. It certainly does a wonderful job with this dish.

JACOB’S CREEK RESERVE CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2002

Ivan Donaldson
Vanilla and spicy overlying blackcurrant fruit. It’s a really fleshy wine with plenty of concentration but refined tannins. It went very well with the food. It was my favourite wine of the flight.

Adrian Atkinson
At first glance it has a deep, brooding nose but it’s really made up of some bret greenness. Dry, lacking charm, green and dilute on the finish. A dry wine.

SEPPELT ST PETERS GRAMPIANS SHIRAZ 2003

Norma Ratcliffe
Sweet leather, tar like nose. Divine smelling. Chocolates, pepper, cinnamon. Smooth on palate. Long finish. Superbly balanced acid, fruit and ripe tannins. A winner. Elegant. Worked brilliantly, even with a fairly high alcohol, because the balance was so elegant. Loved the cherries, the chocolates and the spice that came out of the beef with this wine.

Steve Flamsteed
Slightly green fruit showing a hint of sour cherry character. Kind of a warm climate Shiraz in a fairly commercial style. It is marred by a bit of cheap, ordinary oak, but on the palate, there are some lovely dark cocoa characters. Dark chocolate but a slightly raspy tannin.

BALNAVES OF COONAWARRA THE TALLY RESERVE 2001

Kym Milne
Very classy. Closed, iodine aromas. A lovely, structured wine. Medium weight. Firm structural tannin. A Bordeaux like structure. Delicious with the food. Very integrated and silky flavour. Coped with the food but didn't overpower it at all. Excellent wine.

Neil Hadley
Slightly varnishy oak that sits over the wine flavours. It has a rather over firm, tannic structure and a fruit that fails to claw its way back to the front of the mind. Even the food fails to balance the wine.

Mr Riggs Shiraz 2004

Tony Allen
Very fruity Shiraz. Lots of dark spicy fruit. Good structure. The quality of the wine seemed to be more apparent when had with food. No synergy with the food though.

Mark de Vere
Rich, warm, lush. Rich, fine tannin. Long. With the food it is long. Delicious, lush fruit. Nice integration of the acid and tannin. Long finish.

Steve Flamsteed
Hot and jammy Barossa style. Obviously classy old vine fruit but a little bit extracted. Spicy oak. Fairly intense. Just a bit too much. This is a big big wine. It was a lot better with the food, but still a bit too over the top and a little bit awkward.

Philip Reedman
A bruiser. Nasty oak. It’s very drying. The food does cut through a lot of that oak and it does allow some of the fruit to show. Overall, the wine is pretty ungainly.

ELDERTON ASHMEAD FAMILY CSM 2001

Paul White
Some integrated, currant like characters. A fairly viscous, concentrated wine. Good length. Linear style. Fairly well balanced and it proved to be a good match. The balanced wine balanced the components of the dish very, very well.

Adrian Atkinson
One of these open gravel. Wet, dull, dilute and short.

BAROSSA VALLEY ESTATE E & E BLACK PEPPER SHIRAZ 2002

Kym Milne
Ripe fruit. Rich, sweet oak. Still very young. Vibrant. Big, rich, vibrant Shiraz like flavours. Nice tannins. Still very primary fruit in flavour. Needs some time. A very good textured wine with the food. It will be even better in time when the oak settles down, but a very classy wine.

Norma Ratcliffe
Sweet Ribena nose. Quite shy. Better on the taste, but very little terpicity. Very dried out tannins. Won’t last. Fruit too dominated. Doesn’t go well with food.

This last wine shows a perfectly how to different people can be so diametrically opposed in their thinking about the same wine. Kim states the wine has nice tannins and the wine will age well; Norma states the tannins have dried out and the wine won't last: they don't come more diametrically opposed than those conclusions.

When putting this article together, I didn't go looking for conflict; these were the first eight wines I looked at and the chances are this sort of disparity in judgment would be fairly common in many wine shows. So how can you trust wine medals and scores when you see such an incredible disparity of conclusions like the ones illustrated above? The answer is you can't.

A single score or a single medal does not mean a thing. It is just one person, or in the case of a medal, a small group of (faceless) people's opinions about that wine. The wine can receive a hundred points and whilst it may be technically good, that does not mean that you will like it. The only person whose palate is important is your own and the best way to benefit from professional wine writers and critics work is to read their tasting notes, understand their verbiage and spend time working out which of those professionals your palate aligns too.

There was a committee of 14 people judging in the Sydney Top 100. I would sum up the award-winners in the following manner; “all entries have been examined by the committee members and the best looking hundred (horses) were selected, many were found to have better looking (camel) humps than others. The trophy winners had two humps.

Finally there is one other aspect to consider. Those marketing and selling the wines that have been awarded Blue/Gold medals in this show will proudly tell people “it won a Blue/Gold medal at the Sydney International Show” but the “punter” they are telling/selling to, will probably have absolutely no idea what the show is all about; but from a marketing perspective it does sound good.

Feel free to submit your comments!

From: KingCabernet25

09/20/2006 04:55:02 Ric,

I have been on your e-mail list for some time now and besides the gazillion other wine related e-mail lists I am on which provide for my &amp;amp;quot;reading pleasure&amp;amp;quot;?, yours is the BEST ever. It is absolutely better than even the Speculators, Vine ADVOCATES and Vine Entused of the world amopngst others. This article you have posted about the judges tasting inconsistency has proved to me that what I knew in my own mind all along is true. EVERYONES palate is unique and as a result their experiences will be of the same, even the so called experts.

Ric I hope that you live a long and prosperous life and I hope that some intelligent publisher gives you the chance to spread your uncanned knowledge farther and wider than it already is.

From: Glen Frederiksen

09/20/2006 09:20:45 Wow! Very ballsy of the Aussies, to print the tasting notes of the wine judges.
As a professional wine judge in California, I have seen some discrepancy of opinion at the judges tables, but the random examples you showed suggest something more approaching anarchy!
I second the suggestion that there is no substitute for knowing your own palate. Join a wine club; attend public wine tastings.

From: Dan Sawyer

09/21/2006 02:15:05 Wow! Reading those opposing sets of tasting notes was like the pourers got their flights mixed up.

We do get led by reviewers who we come to trust after comparing their tasting notes to our own senses.

RPJ obviously has legions of fans who agree with him, just as you do too Ric. I have found your explanations of wines that I have tasted to be explicit and fairly spot-on to my palate. Also Dr Paul White in NZ has a &#39;trustworthy&#39; palate IMHO.

Keep up the great work Ric!!!

From: Mike Pollard

09/25/2006 19:47:22 Hi Ric

While I agree that the SIWC site is educational on quite a few levels, I am not sure I agree with your premise that when it comes to the technical aspects of wine, certain standards should be easier to define. So if a wine is thin, lacking in fruit, overly acidic and has green, unripe tannins, most wine judges should be able to pick up these characteristics. I would argue that there is a range of abilities in detecting the weight of a wine, the presence of fruit, level of acidity, tannins etc. More importantly, very few of us know how to standardize our level of sensitivity to that of a committee. (I would be willing to bet none outside some specialized laboratories have the hardware to do so.)

I know that I am quite sensitive to acidity and bitterness, but I am not so sensitive to oak; in fact I am quite partial to it. Comparing me, or you or anyone against member of the SIWC committee is almost sure to reveal significant differences in the ability to detect the range of components in any individual wine. Increasing the number of wines in the comparison should only increase the differences. It makes the idea of palate calibration a myth. The more comparisons you make between the SIWC committee, the more differences you see. And as you say these folks are the supposed experts, well trained professionals. If they can not agree then maybe there is very little agreement to be had. It really is all about how a wine looks, smells and tastes to the individual.

Mike

From: fred

09/26/2006 03:47:27 Ric,

The point is wellmade as to different palates but the distinction about food only increases the problem - dramatically.

Your excerpts omit reference to the food served - and indeed the sauces served with them.

Quite aside from the basic issue of do whether the author likes the prime food in the first place, the subsequent issues along the lines of
a) is it cooked the way he wants it (eg if you like beef rare and it is welldone, or you prefer your fish or crayfish simply grilled not baked...)
b) does the sauce contain ingredients he does not like
c) does the sauce complement the base food
d) is the food underspiced or overspiced to personal taste (with remarkably different levels of tolerance)
occur before you get to question of whether the wine complements the food (which does not make it food-friendly per se - just friendly to this food in this persons opinion!!!).

Most of the judges are wine judges/critics/makers and not food critics.

Notwithstanding technical ability, and personal preferences there are many professional winemakers and critics whose appreciation of food would hardly qualify them for restaurant commentary (including one whose preference for Yorkshire pudding was legendary, another who thought meat pies were the epitome of good food and various types who are addicted to very heavily spiced food).

The cumulative addition of those variables renders the tasting notes of LESS value than usual (and without the insertion of the relevant food with detail of its sauce and cooking).

Unlike some of our friends across the water, I was brought up to believe wine and food complement each other : and to drink without eating is foolish - while to eat without drinking is unthinkable.
Any wine which is not food friendly; to some food is a poor wine by definition (for me).

Whether the food is well-matched to the wine is a different matter as noted above (and of course there are obvious categories which just will not work: lemon sole with a big red - or almost any red for that matter, truffled beef with a delicate young riesling etc).

Two more variables to add to the problem : 14 judges at dinner means that not all pours came from the same bottle for any individual wine, so you have additional variation, and in some cases the published note will reflect the judges return to the wine later (with additional tastes/flavours flavours from food/breathing).

It is a wonderful idea to have tasting in a real live setting ie at dinner with food, but as with any semi-scientific experiment you have to state all your parameters, and then accept that tasting is still a matter of some art: personal preferences, palate etc.

Oddly enough, unpleasant though it may be, the greatest consensus will occur in technically flawed wines (but even then some have greater tolerance for brett, VA etc than others).

If it is hard enough attempting to align palates with a critic, it is even harder when you do not know his food palate, and any description of the food may be deficient in detail to allow proper discrimination.