I tasted 61 wines on a recent Tuesday. That was before lunch. After lunch, I tasted another 61.
Sure, it sounds like fun, but it was actually tougher than you might imagine. I wasn't just tasting, but evaluating each wine to select the very best.
I was honored to be one of the judges at the San Francisco Chronicle's annual Wine Competition, held in Cloverdale, Calif. This is a major competition, the largest in the United States. This year 4,913 wines were submitted from just about every winemaking region in the country.
The tasting lasts three days, with the fourth day reserved for a sweepstakes round.
Each of those 4,913 wines is tasted by a minimum of three (and often five) judges. That's well over 15,000 wine glasses that have to be scrupulously washed and polished. It takes 180 volunteers just to keep the wine flowing and each bottle properly tagged and organized.
There are 60 judges, each with one or more areas of expertise: journalists, educators, winemakers, viticulturalists, wholesalers and retailers. The judges are divided into 14 groups, most with five people per panel.
Wines are divided into groups by variety or style and paired with other wines in the same price range. Each judge's group is assigned a tasting category, for example "Merlot, $20-$24.99," with a different category tasted in the morning and evening sessions.
The wines are poured blind (meaning judges don't know where the wines are from or who made them), with about eight in each flight. After discussion - sometimes spirited! - with the other members of the panel, a wine might be given a bronze, silver, gold, double gold or no medal at all.
Gold medal winners from each flight are retasted, and the judges select the best wine of that group to receive the Best In Class award. The panel could then decode to send that wine to a final sweepstakes round, where it competes against tons of wine from every category to be crowned Best White or Best Red.
How to be a judge
The first rule when tasting this many wines is to not drink them. Wine is swirled around in the mouth and then spit out. If you don't spit, you're napping on the floor by 10 a.m.
The second rule: You absolutely have to trust yourself and your response to what is in the glass. Self-confidence is critical when you have to stand up for a wine you love in front of four people who don't love it so much.
It quickly became apparent in my group that we generally agreed about many wines. Often, we would all recognize and adore a wine that was clearly of superior quality. However, there were times we didn't agree and were willing to fight for personal favorites.
The third lesson is that vanity has no place in wine judging. Your teeth will be purple. You are spitting in front of a group of people all day. You'll gain 5 pounds cleansing your palate with bread between flights. Good judges just dive in and worry about skinny jeans and white teeth after they get home.
My most overwhelming impression was how good so many of the wines were. It's a great time to be an American wine lover. There is terrific wine at every price point.
Heck, Target's wine cube cabernet shiraz blend made it to the sweepstakes. The winning red was a spectacular pinot noir from Graton Ridge Cellars that retails for $40.
All of the winners are listed at www.sfgate.com/bestofclass/ by category. Look up your favorites style and give one of the medal winners a try.
More on labels
I had many responses to my column about saving wine labels.
Kerry Kenner, local wine pro from Charlotte, says the easiest method is to fill the bottle with hot water and let it sit for a bit. The label peels right off. Kerry says this is especially effective for New World wines.
Don Young of Raleigh has been collecting labels for 20 years. He had a terrific solution to my issue of having labels stick to my fingers when I remove them. He uses a little baby powder as he starts to peel off a label. Don also advocates ironing wine labels between two dish towels to eliminate wrinkles.
Philip Morrissette of Cary says he gave up trying to remove labels. He simply sends e-mail to wineries and asks for the label he wants. They gladly send them, he said.
I also had a couple of dozen e-mail messages from readers who said something along the lines of "Get a digital camera, dummy!"
