Guildmaster Rantings #1

by Sam Hauk

These ramblings are not meant to point any fingers, they are simply meant to have people stop and do a little self-reflection. Furthermore, I have been there, done that and I am willing to guess we all (or at least most of us) have.

In looking over several of our tasting results, it seems to me that some of us tend to score all wines between 14 and 15.8 points. Some may have done so when they first joined the guild so as not to stand out with scores of 9.5 or 19.5. But then it becomes habit. Now I am first to admit, we all have off days, we all make mistakes, we don’t always pay as much attention as we should when judging wines, we are not always familiar with certain positive or negative qualities and we all have differing tolerances for various wine related components. That said, it seems to me that when some low level commercial wine is entered into a tasting it receives medal scores. Wines such as Copper Moon, Sawmill Creek, etc., like them or not, are not wines that have distinctive qualities that set them above others and are thus worthy of a medal. Most of the wine sold in the world is not medal wine. For a wine to be worthy of a medal, it needs to be more than drinkable. It needs to be more than OK. Now, I would never suggest that there is a direct connection between price and quality, but it would be equally wrong to suggest that there is no correlation at all. I personally think that Farnese ($7.99) is good value for the money and is a decent everyday wine and most people would enjoy it. However, while it is good ordinary wine and quite popular, it is not in the medal league.

As judges, we must always be aware of our own biases. I love dessert and after dinner wines. When I judge these wines, I have to set aside my personal preferences and judge the wines objectively on their own merits. Contrarily, I am not a fan of most sherries. When evaluating these wines, once again, I need to set aside my likings and focus on the merits of the wine before me.

Many years ago, when I first started judging, I attended a session in Victoria where one of the flights was vintage champagne. It was felt at the time that judges had little or no experience with top quality bubbly, so the guild decided to splurge. I love sparkling wines and was thrilled to attend that session. The wines we tasted ranged from $90.00 to $200.00 a bottle. To my very great surprise, I didn’t like any of them. I don’t like mushrooms so while I was thinking, “overly intense raw, ripe bread yeast” and “musty” others were oohing and awwing over, “toasty”, “creamy yeast” and “truffles”. I came away from that session with two things. One, was a sense of financial relief because I will never be tempted to spend big bucks on fine champagne, and two, if I taste such flavours when judging in a competition, I need to recognize them as positive attributes, no matter what I personally think. So if any of you are ever tempted to buy me a bottle of bubbly, save your money and pass on the Dom and Vivue. Summerhill’s Cipes, Sumac Ridges Stellar Jay, or a Spanish sparkler would be much more appreciated.

The point of all this?

  1. If you are presenting a session, think of Clint Eastwood and include, the good, (and hopefully very good), the bad and the ugly. There should be an excellent example of that style of wine, preferably as the taster, some good, average, low quality wines and, most of the time, a flawed or faulty wine. Ideally we should have a range of wines that would fall into (dare I hope for gold?) silver, bronze, good, mediocre and flawed categories and hopefully those judging the wines will have scores that reflect that range. It is not particularly useful to have tastings were all wines are worthy of bronze medals. We need examples on both sides of this ‘norm’.
  2. Don’t treat monthly sessions as a game of “Spot the Duplicate”. Duplicates are a necessary evil to help determine a judges consistency, but it has nothing to do in competition and it encourages too many to “play it safe”. Be brave, be bold, be honest with yourself.
  3. Try to be as objective as you can when judging wines. Set aside your personal preferences. Whether you like it or not, is immaterial. It is what it is.
  4. Take steps to combat ‘cellar pallet’. Consider buying commercial wines to add to your collection, join or form a tasting group of wine makers or others who enjoy wines or try a new wine in a pub or restaurant that offers wines by the glass.

To this end, the current BCGWJ executive plans to present a spring training session that will focus on a point, by point, evaluation of a very good, a good and a mediocre white wine. Afterwards we will do the same with three red wines. Stay tuned for more, later.


Sam Hauk is Guildmaster, BC Guild of Wine Judges.