Sonoma Harvest Fair wine judging ends first of three days

<p>The countdown began Wednesday, the first day of the Sonoma County Harvest Fair wine competition, with 25 intrepid judges on a quest to sip through 1,214 wines in three days. </p><p>The results of the judging and the winners will be announced Saturday at the Awards Night Gala in Santa Rosa’s Grace Pavilion at the Sonoma County fairgrounds.</p><p>Organizers said there was a bigger pool of wine this year to judge - an additional 162 entries, signaling the economic downturn as less wine is allocated, inventories back up and wineries have more wines available to submit.</p><p>“Generally speaking, there is a positive correlation between higher inventories of wine and an increasing number of entries into wine competitions,” said Bob Fraser, the top organizer of the contest. “There was definitely an increase of entries for all price points of wine in the competition, especially with zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir.”</p><p>Fraser said he noticed individual wineries entered more brands of still-available, smaller-case lots.</p><p>“For example, I believe Mazzocco Vineyards (of Healdsburg) makes about eight zins and if it had 400 cases of a particular vineyard designate, with the economy a little sluggish, now it’s being entered.”</p><p>Responding to a new study released of U.S. wine contests that found there was little consistency from contest to contest regarding gold medal winners, Fraser said he has found the opposite to be true. The study focused on 13 wine competitions in 2003.</p><p>Fraser said his method of quality control is to put duplicates of about six wine entries into a large grouping of wine being judged and to keep an eye on consistency.</p><p>“I’d say 80 percent is very consistent with individual judges’ first score matching their second,” he said. “The 20 percent doesn’t concern me because of the collaborative nature of testing... We don’t just get scores and run them through the computer.”</p><p>To understand “collaborative tasting,” consider “the silver bullet” concept, which allows one judge to override the votes of other panelists. Panelist Ben Pearson of Santa Rosa’s Bottle Barn said every judge gets one silver bullet every day of the tasting.</p><p><NO1><NO>Sommelier Chris Sawyer of Petaluma used his silver bullet to make sure an Italian red (Primitivo) he fancied earned a gold medal, despite the fact that his colleagues Ralph Kunkee, a former professor of Enology at U.C. Davis, gave it a bronze medal.</p><p>“It was rock star,” Sawyer said. “It had balanced red fruit and pepper spice. Very impressive.”</p><p>But Kunkee said, “I didn't think it had a lot of varietal character.”</p><p>Last year more medals were handed out than ever before in the history of the fair - a total of 914 in all categories, gold, silver and bronze. Fraser said it’s typical for 8 to 12 percent of entries to win gold medals in most wine competitions, but this contest usually edges closer to 12. </p><p>“This is because of the overall higher quality of wines submitted to the Harvest Fair Wine Competition,” he said. “Professional judges comment to me that they look forward to judging this fair because it’s the competition in which progressive, trendy and new wine styles and flavors are first recognized for the American public.”</p><p>Judging will wrap up Friday morning, when the panelists sort through their top wines and agree on a sweepstakes red and white, the highest honors of the annual fair. More than 900 of the fair entries will be poured on Sunday for members of the trade from 1 to 3 p.m. at Grace Pavilion. Organizers said this new event, which is free, is intended to help wineries with marketing during a challenging economy.</p><p>The medal-winning wines will be available to taste at the Harvest Fair, Oct. 2 through 4th, with other activities including a giant pumpkin contest, chef demonstrations and the World Championship Grape Stomp.</p><p>Wine writer Peg Melnik can be reached at 707-521-5310 or peg.melnik@pressdemocrat.com.</p>