Berger: Judging best of the best at Six Nations Wine Challenge

SYDNEY, Australia – Evaluating 600 wines in a three-day period is no walk in the park and not all that enjoyable.

Just imagine trying 55 Syrahs in a row with their high tannins, high alcohol levels, and somewhat homogeneous flavors.

But judging at such a contest is enlightening, especially when the wines are hand-selected and represent six different New World wine nations, about 100 from each nation divided into 16 separate classes.

I have been a wine judge for 35 years and usually find that most U.S.-based competitions attract wines that aim to hit a middle-of-the-road style that most consumers will appreciate. As such, American buyers find the results to be helpful in buying commercial wines.

The Six Nations Wine Challenge, staged each year in Australia, provides a more interesting list of winners, since the wines that were evaluated here all were hand-selected by the judges from each of the six countries they represent.

Wines had to be invited to participate and in theory represent the best a country makes. As a result, I was able to see a range of styles I’d otherwise never see unless I went to each country and got a chance to talk with each of those countries’ wine experts.

In such a judging, we would expect that the United States and New Zealand would be top contenders for highest-scoring Pinot Noirs, since the other nations (Argentina, Chile, Australia, and South Africa) are not noted for their expertise with Pinot.

As it turned out, we learned that the top Pinot Noir in the event came from the United States. (We won’t know who made it for a couple of weeks.)

South Africa annually is expected to do well with Chenin Blanc, Australia with Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon, Argentina with Malbec, and Chile with Carmenere.

But as it often happens in such competitions, the top wines often do not follow expectations, and it is clear from this event that grape growing and wine making expertise are spreading so quickly that it’s not possible to make any broad generalizations.

As a result, handicapping this competition often leads to divergent results.

Last year, for example, an Australian Malbec won that class -- to the chagrin of the Argentine judge. And the best Shiraz was judged to be from an Argentine winery, startling the Aussie judge.

Fortunately, all six judges have decades of experience and weren’t shocked by such disparate results. Moreover, each judge has a grand sense of humor and they love to tease one another when an outlier dominates a class it wasn’t supposed to.

As in the last few years, I was the sole U.S. judge. The others: Eduardo Bretheuer from Chile, Fabricio Portelli of Argentina, Huon Hooke of Australia, Bob Campbell from New Zealand, and Michael Fridjhon from South Africa.

Since the results won’t be fully tabulated for at least a week (the scoring is complicated), we don’t yet know which wines were voted as the best.

But we do know that New Zealand was declared Nation of Show for its overall showing (many medals and trophies) and that some of the categories were clearly better in overall quality than others.

One thing I took away from the judging was that two of the categories -- the blended white wines and the blended red wines -- showed far less quality than I expected.

Part of this is due to the fact that a lot of what I tasted appeared to be wines not made to any particular style or quality standard, but simply to make use of some grape varieties that cannot be sold as varietal wines.

There are exceptions, of course, and some of these blends showed a sense of style and character.

But for the most part, many such blends seemed to be amorphous mélanges that have a lot less going on than most wine lovers would appreciate. Especially for the price.

With the major wine categories, however, the results should make for fascinating reading – and offer wine lovers a new list of wines to try to get.

A report will follow.

Wine of the Week: 2014 Dry Creek Fume Blanc, Dry Creek Valley ($14) -- The tea/lime/lemon and delicate tropical notes of this wine are striking and to me makes it a better, and certainly more distinctive than Dry Creek’s pricier ($18) Sauvignon Blanc. Winemaker Tim Bell has done a superb job with this smaller-production wine.

Dan Berger lives in Sonoma County and he publishes a private newsletter on wine, Dan Berger’s Vintage Experiences (www.VintageExperiences.com).