Avenue Vine

All the night’s awards will be published in Avenue Vine shortly...

But for this short article we discuss only one of the 3,000 plus wines...

I’m sure you’ve all heard about last months, June 28th, stunning revelation Charles Shaw 2005 California Chardonnay (yes, that $1.99 “Two-Buck Chuck” made by Bronco Wine Company and sold through Trader Joe’s) was judged the Best Chardonnay from California at the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition...

And if you haven’t these two articles, “Two, That’s TWO! California State Fair Golds for 'Two-Buck Chuck,”“ June 28, 2007, and “More About: $1.99 Chardonnay Judged California’s Best,” June 30, 2007, should prepare you for what follows.

Since then I’ve been mulling over the status of Two-Buck Chuck as the best Chardonnay in California. It’s been about two weeks now and I still haven’t totally accept it. The news of this apocalypse leaked out around June 27th that judges at the California State Fair Wine Competition had given Charles Shaw Chardonnay California a double-gold medal.

And I know you’re wondering how could a simple, cheap wine come out of a respected wine competition with a double gold medal? I was going to let the question go and get on with my life when something caught my imagination and off I went seeking a few bottles of the less than rarer Charles Shaw 2005 California Chardonnay.

Thinking I’d stick ‘05 Charles Shaw in small blind tasting with the likes of an '05 Rombauer Chardonnay, an ‘05 Acacia Chardonnay and maybe an '05 Delicato Chardonnay just to see if my results might enlighten me, via a small scale California Chardonnay Showdown, to what possibly could be going on?

Now the Judges in the California State Fair are writers, winemakers, merchants — all presumably wine pros of some sort — and have passed a test to prove they can identify several wine faults, etc., before they become California State Fair judges.

I myself have taken the two classes at Davis which prepare, pre-train and affords you the methods necessary to train yourself in the subtleties of evaluating various aromas, flaws, styles and varietals of wine. Much emphasis is placed on the detection of flaws, a multitude of wine aromas and in-depth study of varietal characteristics during these two, two day sessions.

All this being taught at UC Davis under the auspices of John Buechsenstein whom has been a winemaker and wine educator for more than 25 years. John has extensive experience making wine in the Napa Valley and other wine growing regions of the California coast. Buechsenstein's passion for wine has taken him to the wine regions of Bordeaux, Champagne, Paris and Rhone Valley in France.

As I mentioned above, (. . . have passed a test to prove they . . . ), this day of rigorous tasting duplicates many of the consistency and identification tests required of a wine competition judge. It is not a class for beginners and requires basic familiarity with wine types, flavor, odors and flaws. The class will not "credential" a taster as a wine judge, but allows participants to test and expand basic tasting abilities.

Topics and tasting include sessions on wine odors, defect recognition, tasting consistency and wine memory.

Yes it is highly recommend that interested persons first take an introductory wine sensory course or have equivalent experience before enrolling in this course. For an additional $50 fee, students who register for this course may also elect to have their test results graded by special arrangement with the instructor and submitted to the California State Fair Wine Judging Committee as candidates for State Fair wine judges.

And that’s how the judges got to the State Fair to judge these some 3,000 wines presented for this year’s competition.

Needless to say questions and suppositions about this 2007 judging now abound!

Has the system of judging failed?. Maybe the judges had tried too many wines that day, or disagreed heavily over more controversial wines that were either very oaky, unoaked, too heavy with malolactic or something, so the only wine they could agree that they all liked was the most innocuous one??. I understand this happens frequently in big competitions with multiple judges.

Maybe the judges themselves were not up to the task?. Maybe not enough of them had experience with great Chardonnay, or maybe it happened to be a group prejudiced against high-alcohol or even against Chardonnay in general??

How about the samples sent to the competition were not the same wine that are available for us to try in our blind tasting? This is probably true in a very straightforward sense, because with millions of cases of Two-Buck Chuck being sold, it can’t all have been blended from exactly the same base wines in the same proportions in the same tank. There are two bottling available–one from Napa and the other from Sonoma

Do fairs give an alternative, more populist kind of analysis of wine quality that’s probably more in tune with the average American consumer’s palate?. Various vintners have said that a silver or gold medal significantly boosts sales, especially in their tasting rooms, because it’s a third-party endorsement that people who’ve never heard of the popular critics understand.

Another group of considerations might be that overall, wine competitions serve a purpose, and at the least they provide a system to evaluate thousands of wines that might otherwise not be tasted or evaluated for public consumption.

Wine competitions typically have experienced tasters on their panels. But they all go about things differently, and certainly the results from some competitions are more credible than others.

Some competitions, for instance, judge wines by price range. Virtually all wines judged at competitions are submitted by wineries. I’m not aware of one competition that buys wines to judge.

Similarly, judges bring different perspectives to these competitions. When you have a panel of tasters who have dissimilar views on what constitutes a varietal wine, or a great wine, or a flawed wine—whether it’s too much oak or too much residual sugar—it’s difficult to build the consensus needed to award a wine a medal.

What can happen is the panel’s votes gravitate toward the center. That is, they pick a clean, fruity, well-made and flawless wine that’s more middle of the road and inoffensive than distinctive..

Well after that long journey through facts and suppositions we arrive back at the original premise of this article: What more Awards could be given to the Charles Shaw 07' Chardonnay by the California State Fair Wine Competition?

Yes the official results of the judging were released and properly celebrated on Thursday, July 12th’s eve. And the next award to add to the list of accolades being bestowed upon this “Double Gold,” Best Chardonnay in California will now include: Best Value Double Gold Wine--Charles Shaw Winery 2005 California Chardonnay.

Although I didn’t get around to tasting the Charles Shaw ‘05 California Chardonnay last night, I did get to taste many of the winners and bunches of other truly great representations of the state’s varietal bottling and blends. The annual Grape and Gourmet truly is a wonderful opertunity to taste some of the best wines from the state of California.