Harvest Fair winning wines revealed — mostly

The verdicts are in, but a mystery remains.

The winners of the Sonoma County Harvest Fair Wine Competition are being revealed Sunday, but the top three wines - the sweepstakes winners - have yet to be unveiled.

Sonoma County wine lovers will have to wait until the Harvest Awards Night Sept. 28 to find out the trio of sweepstakes winners - the white, red and specialty wines.

“All the wines used to be announced at the gala and not before, but the fair board thought this would bring increased excitement and anticipation for the sweepstakes winners,” said Bob Fraser, head coordinator of the competition.

This new format is a first in the fair’s 40-year history.

In past years, retailers braced for a crush of customers once the sweepstakes winners were announced. With the new format, wine lovers can expect to find many of today’s winners on store shelves ahead of Harvest Awards Night.

The wineries that reeled in the most gold level awards are: Wilson Winery (18); Mazzocco Winery (9); Imagery Estate Winery (8); Balletto Vineyards (7); Trentadue Winery (6); Wellington Vineyards (6); Matrix Winery (5); Williamson Wines (5); Windsor Vineyards (5).

The sweepstakes winners will come from the pool of Best of Class wines.

The competition is a fall rite of passage in Sonoma County. Entries in the contest have one thing in common: They’re produced from Sonoma County grapes.

The competition culminates in Harvest Awards Night, a coming-out party for the sweepstakes winning red, white and specialty wines, a category that includes sparkling wines, late harvest dessert wines, port and rosé.

The evening will also celebrate the county’s top winemakers, growers, microbrewers and culinary artists. The gala, which begins at 4:30 p.m., is at a new location this year, Santa Rosa’s Wells Fargo Center. This year the industry and the public were invited, with 525 each paying at least $100.

Last week, 21 judges sipped 1,081 wines in three days. To cleanse their palates, tasters went through 45 loaves of French bread, 48 cans of olives and 25 pounds of roast beef.

The contest was in the Showcase Cafe at the Sonoma County fairgrounds, and it began the yearly ritual of genteel sparring over each wine.

“I’ve never seen judges get personal or contentious. It just gets passionate,” said moderator Corky Watts. “Someone has a strong feeling about a wine - good or bad - and will verbalize it in a strong way. I saw a little bit of that today.”

Watts was referring to Wine No. 10 in a flight of cabernet sauvignon. Two judges gave it a gold and the third, a bronze.

Panelist Mike Dunne, contributing wine columnist for the Sacramento Bee, was the outlier.

“The wine didn’t have the varietal definition I look for in a cabernet sauvignon,” he said. “Bottom line, it didn’t say cabernet sauvignon to me, but it did to the other judges, apparently.”

Panelist Ben Pearson, wine buyer of Santa Rosa’s Bottle Barn, said, “I can’t imagine someone not liking that wine. It had perfectly ripened cabernet fruit, a plush texture and an excellent length.”

Contention is built into the competition to ensure each wine is analyzed from different perspectives, Fraser said. Each panel is comprised of professionals from different backgrounds, including wine journalism, education, food, trade and tourism. The educator on each panel has a chemistry background to serve as quality control, there to detect any flaw in a wine, he added.

This collaborative system of judging has been used since the Harvest Fair’s initial competition in 1975. Organizers were advised by UC Davis enology professors that this was a better method than secret ballots, which were popular at the time.

“This system has been widely duplicated around the county,” Fraser said. “The belief is you’ll have more of a valid analysis of a particular wine.”

Fraser said a goal of his this year was to add “fresh vitality” to the collaborative system with new recruits. “Nearly 40 percent, eight of the 21 judges, have never done this competition before,” he said. “I felt it was important to bring in new faces from different geographical areas for outreach of Sonoma County wines.”

This year’s judges hail from all over the United States, including New York, North Carolina and Virginia. Entries are up this year by 107 wines, with an increase in zinfandel, point noir and chardonnay. The judges awarded a total of 945 winners, with 41 that went on to Best of Class. There were 59 double gold medals, 178 gold , 477 silver, and 231 bronze.

A wine earns double gold distinction when all the judges on the panel are unanimous in giving it a gold.

The number of gold medal winners (double gold and gold) has declined slightly, from 23 percent last year, to 21 percent this year. Gold medal winners are typically 8 to 12 percent in national competitions. That figure typically bumps to 12 to 15 percent gold and beyond in Sonoma County, Fraser said.

“The reason is because we have a higher percentage of quality wines submitted,” Fraser explained. “This is the most premium wine growing region in the world.”

Wine Writer Peg Melnik can be reached at 521-5310 or peg.melnik@pressdemocat.com.