North Coast Wine Challenge – Behind the Scenes
The Scene of the Crime
It was somewhere between my 75th and 80th wine tasted of the morning when it really started to sink in. No, not the wine. I was spitting all of that. It was the fait accompli that had taken place two years ago in this very room. That was when Pinot Noir I had made had somehow weaseled its way past hundreds of other wines, dozens of discerning palates, and made it through to the sweepstakes round the next day.
On this day, I was working as a judge in the North Coast Wine Challenge. I had gotten my seat on a judging panel on the merit that our Vaughn Duffy Pinot Noir had won the whole competition two years prior. Head judge Daryl Groom took me up on my offer to work as one of the 30+ judges tasked with evaluating some 1,300 wines. I was curious on not only how the judging process works in competitions like this, but I also wanted to visit the scene of where the greatest triumph that our winery has experienced had taken place.
The amount of work needed just to organize a competition like this is astonishing. A whole army of volunteers prepares the various flights of wines for judges to evaluate. A judging panel is comprised of 3 judges and a panel coordinator who work together to award medals and scores to each wine in their flight. I was on a judging panel with radio and media personality Ziggy Eschliman, who Sonoma County residents know as “Ziggy the Wine Gal” and Harry Bryan, who has been the GM at iconic Valette restaurant in Healdsburg since it opened 10 years ago. Together we spent the morning working through flights of Pinot Noir, Zinfandel, Red Blends, Nouveau style Reds, Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache. After lunch we came back and did the whites—Chardonnay, Viognier and Rosé.
We would each work our way through the flights pretty much in silence and make our notes on each wine. When the flight was done, we would go through each wine and say if we thought it was worthy of a bronze, silver or gold medal. Being that this is a competition of wines that all come from North Coast vineyards where quality is paramount, most of the wines were awarded silver or gold medals. When all three of us agreed that a wine was gold medal worthy, it was awarded the prestigious “Double Gold” and put in the running for the “Best of Class” from that flight of wines. We would then go back and evaluate all of the Double Gold wines and award a Best of Class for that flight. In categories that were small like Nouveau style Red or Viognier, those Best of Class wines automatically qualified for the next days “Sweepstakes” round. In categories like Pinot Noir that had 200+ entries and 8 different Best of Class awards across 8 different judging panels, those 8 Pinots were then judged later in the afternoon by an All Star panel that would decide which Pinot Noir would be represented in Sweepstakes. Making it to Sweepstakes is a big honor itself, and from there you have a chance to win the coveted awards like Best of Sonoma County, Best Red, etc., and the top award of the whole competition — “Best of the Best.” This was the awared our wine had won two years ago.
The next morning we came back to judge the Sweepstakes wines. We had a mere 35 wines to work through to decide the big awards. Each of these wines had been named the best in its category. In the case of this competition a category is a variety (like Pinot Noir or Sauvignon Blanc) or type of wine (like Rhone style Red Blend). There is no grouping by price category so in the North Coast Wine Challenge it really is all about the overall quality of the wine. All of the judges sat together at long tables with all 35 wines arrange by the Army of Volunteers beautifully in front of them. We worked our way through a few Sparkling Wines and Rosés, which were all quite beautiful and a lovely way to start the morning. Then it was on to the white wines and finally the reds and couple dessert wines. The judges would raise their hands for the wines they thought were worthy of those “Best of” awards. We could vote for multiple wines in each category, which I liked because it would have been hard to choose “the one.” The wines with the most votes moved on. Finally, it came time to vote for the “Best of the Best.” The final vote came down to a Cabernet Sauvignon versus a Riesling. Both were outstanding wines and the judges picked the Cabernet by just one vote! I ended up voting for the Cabernet—it was quite outstanding.
Daryl then revealed all the sweetstakes wines and finally the big winners. There was a buzz in the room and many of the judges were excited for the winners that they knew. We had made it through the competition and crowned the next “Best of the Best.” I am looking forward to going back as a judge next year.