Wine Judging & Competitions

In the beginning Dawn entered our wines in competition and I was not enthusiastic about it. I don't believe in some third party with some unknown level of knowledge passing judgement on my wine. Why bother - by that time it's already a finished product and customers will judge it for you.

We produce limited batches of single-vineyard, single-varietal wines that are all taken by our wine club so we have no commercial reason to enter competitions however in the days when we did enter competitions, our wines were left to speak for themselves and they said a lot . . .

RESULTS ~ San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition
RESULTS ~ Sonoma County Harvest Fair Wine Competition

As a wine lover you have to question . . . are wine competition results a fair judgement of a the worth of a wine?

Studies make it abundantly clear that wine judges, regardless of their degree of experience, will consistently give the same wine different scores.

Many judges even admit to the influence of outside issues ranging from their attitude at the moment to when and where in the lineup a wine was tasted.

Significant studies have been made into the validity of professional wine-judging including a four-year study published in the Journal of Wine Economics, conducted by winemaker and statistics professor Robert Hodgson, followed by findings of Brock University marketing professor Antonia Mantonakis published in the journal Psychological Science.

Additionally, Food Science Professor Carole Honoré-Chedozeau and her colleagues at the University of Burgundy in Dijon published supporting results from a three-year study.

I think it is safe to conclude that wine judge evaluations are simply a set of impressions at a particular moment in time. The ultimate judge of our wines is the consumer who votes with their taste buds and credit card.