For most people, a wine competition is a mysterious source of the medals they encounter on the wines they buy at their local wine store.  To those who make wine, a wine competition is something that requires them to pay an exorbitant entry fee, only to be disappointed when their creation is ignored by the judges.  To a wine judge and wine competition organizer (i.e., me), a wine competition is a labor of love filled with challenges and stresses.

Let me explain.

I was first invited to be a judge in a wine competition in 1981.  It was a well-known competition, founded in 1975, and open to vinous entries from around the world.  I was a new entrant to the wine business, working the floor of a prominent Dallas restaurant, selling wine, and I was a bit intimidated when I learned who the other judges were.  They included Andre Tchelistcheff, considered the father of California wine making, and Maryann Graf, the first female graduate of the University of California at Davis with a major in Enology.

What I quickly learned was that those two, as well as the other judges, were not there to evaluate their colleagues.  They were there to assess the quality of the wines and collaborate with the other judges to achieve that straightforward goal.  Not only that, they were there to conduct that assessment in a setting designed to make their work as easy as possible.  Judging in this manner was a pleasure and a great learning experience for me.

More on that later.

I learned about judging on the fly, through direct experience, and that learning came in various forms, not always pleasant.  That is, judging may not be as simple for the judge as smelling and tasting a wine, then placing a score.  It can be much more complex, involving having to keep track of entry numbers, pouring wines into numbered glasses, writing tasting notes on the fly while debating assessments of the wines with other judges.  Oh, there is also the fatigue factor.  A judge might be asked to stand while tasting, which might not seem onerous, unless the tasting lasts for eight hours and involves tasting  eighty to 120 wines.  And we’re not just talking about physical fatigue.  The palate can tire as well.

Taken together, these various events began to incubate a desire to create a structure that would fulfill the wishes of the consuming public while also serving the interests of the wine producers—and supporting the abilities of the professional wine judges as well.

What emerged in the early 1980’s was my concept of the ideal wine competition.  Having learned from the examples of other competitions, it was neither pioneering nor unique.  It was, in fact, modeled after the Sonoma Harvest Fair, which is still going strong after nearly 50 years.  Consider it a typical American wine competition.

That typical model has a number of components:  Compliance with local alcohol laws, a facility large enough to temporarily house a large number of wines, a support staff  (typically, interested volunteers) for organizing and pouring the wines, a judging area for the judges, a database to track the entries and their eventual scores, and a code of ethics that places a high value on integrity and accuracy.

Thus, the Dallas Morning News (an early sponsor) Wine Competition was founded.  Entries were initially limited to American wines, but eventually grew to include wines from around the world.  Eventually, the name changed to The Dallas Morning News International Wine Competition , then more recently—after a sale to James Tidwell, MS—to the Texsom International Wine Awards (TIWA).

TIWA, as do all other competitions, must work hard to organize the event. There is a need to recruit entries, which is no small task.  There are literally dozens of competitions in the US alone.  And each one asks for entry fee (usually between $100 and $200) in exchange for a shipment of 4 to 6 bottles and the hope that an award (typically a medal ranging from bronze to gold) will result in increased sales.  Then there is the need to recruit experienced judges, often for no pay, who are willing to spend two to three days sniffing, tasting, and spitting 100-120 wines in a day.  An established competition may need to recruit 40-50 judges to evaluate the entries, which may number in the range of 2 to 3 thousand.  If the competition is truly large, such as the Decanter competition, those numbers can increase as much as five-fold.

The result is an extraordinarily busy backroom—where the wines and support staff are busily entering data and pouring wines—adjacent to the quiet of the judging room where the judges, in groups of 4 or 5  are peacefully sipping and spitting.  The wines are likely only identified by a unique number.  The judges typically only know the grape varieties and possibly the region of origin.  The entire process is designed to keep the judges’ work as simple as possible so that they can do what they do best:  Grade the wines.

In the end, the wineries, retailers, and consumers learn which wines have been assessed on a scale ranging from flawed to outstanding.  Only the competition organizers see the incredible amount of effort required.  Oh, and financially, not much profit is earned from that effort.  Rather, what is gained is the realization that the wine industry is a complex set of mutually interdependent relationships.