medals: do we care?

Emery,that's my take too. No offense to Bob Foster or any other judge here, but palates are so individual that reading that a panel of judges I don't know gave something a gold tells me nothing

In fact, sometimes I think medals go to the most "middle of the road" example.

I think 20 years ago, when there might have been more truly technically flawed wines, medals might have been a better indicator. Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

That's not the way judgings work where I come from. If no wine in a category is worthy of a gold medal, then no gold is awarded in that category.

Yes and yes. Hereabouts, two of the biggies are the California State Fair and the Orange County Fair. That said, just because a wine receives a gold medal does not guarantee that _you_ will like it - but the odds are better. After all, a panel of expert tasters liked it pretty well.

Tom S

Emery, As a musician, you probably understand the importance of having a distinct viewpoint in a critic. The problem with most panel tastings* (including all competitions that I'm aware of) is that the winners will usually be the least offensive wine, not necessarily the most interesting one. I am not in any way disparaging the efforts or the skill of the tasters involved, but merely pointing out that any time you judge by committee, wines with character will tend to be somewhat controversial and get low marks from some judges with higher marks from others; OTOH, a well-made, rich, balanced wine with no real distinction will tend to score reasonably high on all ballots. FWIW, this phenomenon is well documented in the peer review of scientific research proposals. The NIH, the major source of gov't funding for biomedical research in the US, has struggled mightily to find a mechanism for funding "high risk, high payoff" proposals, because the normal panel review process tends to disfavor such proposals, as it does "high risk, high payoff" wines. I also question whether the judges in the big competitions can avoid palate fatigue when tasting 100-200 wines per day.

Mark Lipton

• There are exceptions, where a panel of experts is convened to taste, for instance, barrel samples of the latest Bordeaux vintage. In that case, there tend to be consensus trends, even though an individual critic may have a somewhat different ranking of the wines.

When I was ITB I paid scant attention to medals for he following reasons:

1) I have little idea of who judged the wine and under what context and to what effect. For example if 75% of the wines submitted received a medal, I'd be wary especially if the wine received the lowest rank of medals.

2)In that regard, I judged wines in many contexts but generally if there was an significant entry fee, the persons running the competition advised the judges that in order to keep having this competitions, medals had to be awarded liberally.

3)My general experience has been a wine tried at 9AM shows differently when tried again at noon for the best of show competition.

So as a buyer winning the silver at the Gansa Goiurnicht festival never impressed me and as a seller I'd rather have a Parker or WS score anyday.

Medals are great for a wineries pr especially if the competition is prestigious and the winery is new or under new management. It hypes the sales force, creates a buzz etc but it was wasted on me.

"Joe Rosenberg" wrote.....

There are competitions? and there are *competitions*.

A Gold Medal from the Murray River Mudrunners Agricultural Show is not going to do a great deal for me, whereas the International Wine Challenge in London, where the standard of the judging together with the number and quality of entries means that a top award go to a quality wine.

Here in New Zealand, many wineries do not enter competitions; some think that mere competitions are below them, while others know that their wines are "average" and do not want to be seen to be not winning medals.

Others use awards in their marketing thrust.

On a slightly different tangent, judging in the Air NZ Wine Awards (NZ most prestigious show) has just been completed, and some very interesting figures have emerged in respect of numbers of gold medal winning wines which were bottled under Stelvin Caps.

Of the 8 Rieslings which were award gold medals, all 8 were under Stelvin Of the 14 Sauvignon Blanc golds, 13 were under Stelvin Of the 17 Chardonnay golds, 12 were under Stelvin Of the 3 Pinot Gris golds, 2 were under Stelvin

But of more interest....

Of the 11 Pinot Noir golds, 10 were under Stelvin, and Of the 15 Bordeaux varieties which were awarded gold medals, 11 were under Stelvin.

Very interesting figures.

I have long questioned this myself. I have never attempted to taste anywhere near this number of wines at a single sitting. But I have been involved in tastings where even slight consumption (i.e. swallowing) of each wine would cause problems toward the end. I simply do not feel that I can adequately evaluate a wine without swallowing just a little bit of it. Not much, but after 200 wines I would probably be under the table.

Vino

Interesting indeed. Did the judges know which were under Stelvin and which were not? I've seen tastings where the wine was poured in the presence of the judges (labels covered, of course) and a Stelvin-bottled wine would have been obvious.

Vino

Another thought occurs to me about this. It would be interesting to see the results of a tasting of, say, 200 wine samples where the same wines appear at several points throughout the tasting. Does anyone know if anything like this has ever been done?

Vino

"Vino" asked......

No, all wines were served blind.

They have just announced the trophy wine (champion wine in each class) and every trophy went to a Stelvin sealed wine.

In my dealings with wine reps, who are always wanting to push another wine onto the restaurant's list. EVERY single wine they try to sell me has won a meadal or award somewhere, sometime, somehow.... I've tasted a few 'award winning' wines that I found to be vile & undrinkable... So, for me, 'Medals' fall under the heading of 'Propaganda'.

Cheers Mathew

Mostly don't care.

Sure, virtually all judges at wine competitions are superbly well-intentioned. There's just too many different competitions and too many ideas of what is "award quality" for a medal to mean anything.

At least with well-known reviewers, like Parker, or the staff of the various publications, you can get calibrated to their tastes and whims. Medals are just too abstract and too much of a marketing tool.

(Sure, there are exceptions. There are always exceptions. Start with "don't care" and you won't have too many exceptions to worry about)

Yes, but what does "worthy" mean? Dale and Mark's point is that the "middle of the road" wines win, but I would refine this to say that the wines that are very _typical_, meaning demonstrating the typicity of the appellation, win. (In France, anyway, I understand the appellation is known but the tasting is blind. I imagine the category is usually known everywhere.)

Certainly if a wine is obviously flawed, it wouldn't be given a medal. But would your judges really decide that the best of a group of well made wine that represent the category doesn't get a gold because it doesn't have that certain, uh, extra oomph?

-E

] Emery Davis wrote: ] ] > What's the general take on this? Do you have some medals you pay ] > particular attention to, or is this just an even vaguer version of scoring? ] ] Emery, ] As a musician, you probably understand the importance of having a ] distinct viewpoint in a critic. The problem with most panel tastings*

Oh, I understand critics, all right. Don't get me started! :)

] (including all competitions that I'm aware of) is that the winners will ] usually be the least offensive wine, not necessarily the most ] interesting one. I am not in any way disparaging the efforts or the ] skill of the tasters involved, but merely pointing out that any time you ] judge by committee, wines with character will tend to be somewhat ] controversial and get low marks from some judges with higher marks from ] others; OTOH, a well-made, rich, balanced wine with no real distinction ] will tend to score reasonably high on all ballots. FWIW, this

Interesting, that tends to blur even my typicity argument.

] phenomenon is well documented in the peer review of scientific research ] proposals. The NIH, the major source of gov't funding for biomedical ] research in the US, has struggled mightily to find a mechanism for ] funding "high risk, high payoff" proposals, because the normal panel ] review process tends to disfavor such proposals, as it does "high risk, ] high payoff" wines. I also question whether the judges in the big ] competitions can avoid palate fatigue when tasting 100-200 wines per day. ]

I raised this question to Michael P at some point, he contended that with great experience palate fatigue is minimized. I'm an amateur with no pretensions of being a taster either at M. Pronay's or many other of our distinguished contributers' level, but I can witness that after a long 200+ day only big fruit and alcohol penetrates my palate.

] Mark Lipton ] ] * There are exceptions, where a panel of experts is convened to taste, ] for instance, barrel samples of the latest Bordeaux vintage. In that ] case, there tend to be consensus trends, even though an individual ] critic may have a somewhat different ranking of the wines.

I am told that at Hachette broad consensus among judges is very common.

-E

Yer Highness,

] "Vino" asked...... ] ] > Interesting indeed. Did the judges know which were under Stelvin ] > and which were not? ] ] No, all wines were served blind. ]

Just to be contrarian, I wonder how many of the entries were under stelvin? Isn't there some large percentage of kiwi juice under stelvin now?

Also, for young wines, would it make much difference? (Ducking).

For the record, I seem to be in favor of the stuff these days, myself.

-E

] On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 13:13:17 -0500, Mark Lipton ] wrote: ] ] >I also question whether the judges in the big ] >competitions can avoid palate fatigue when tasting 100-200 wines per day. ] >

] I have long questioned this myself. I have never attempted to taste ] anywhere near this number of wines at a single sitting. But I have ] been involved in tastings where even slight consumption (i.e. ] swallowing) of each wine would cause problems toward the end. I simply ] do not feel that I can adequately evaluate a wine without swallowing ] just a little bit of it. Not much, but after 200 wines I would ] probably be under the table. ]

Jeez, Vino. Learn to spit. Seriously, I think there is a method to getting a good taste without swallowing. Or maybe I just got used to the idea over time. There is no way to cover a serious amount of wine tasting ground, at a show or in the car! without spitting, AFAIK.

-E

Hi all;

All medals, awards etc. say to me is "Try me too",,, maybe, if that's the wine type I happen to be interested in/looking for at the moment. For sure, if no tasting is available, then no purchasing is possible!

All competitions develop evaluation guidelines. If you have ever watched a BBQ competition, it is not about good BBQ, it is about making a product that can be judged under the current guidelines and get a good score. If you had a chance to watch the Jancis Robinson series, there is one episode where she is invited to judge with a very well known French panel and is somewhat nervous about it. Once she has the rules she starts and ends up plus or minus 1 point away from the average. Ask Bob Foster about the different competitions that he judges in.

Of course. How does this cause me not to care about medals when choosing a wine?

It all depends on the group giving the medal. If I were considering purchase of a serious wine to keep, I would want as many detailed reviews from critics I trust as possible. The medal from a respected organization would just be one of many details to consider. I have found that for Auslese and above German Rieslings, the top medals awarded by certain regional and national German wine organizations usually indicate a better than average wine for the individual vineyard considered. The German goverment is fairly strict in what it will allow on wine bottles, and I doubt if they would allow a grower to indicate an award from their uncle Fritz or a paid ad agency on the label. I can recall older bottles, mostly of spirits, that showed several very old medals won perhaps in the late 1800s. Of course ownership of the firm and production methods could have changed greatly over the many decades after the medals were won.

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