Behind the scenes at the 2024 North Coast Wine Challenge

Thirty judges will sip through 1,121 naked wines — stripped of their labels, prices and packaging — in a blind tasting at Tuesday’s North Coast Wine Challenge.

Organizers of the two-day competition, which is sponsored by The Press Democrat and is now in its 12th year, put much effort into concealing the identities of the entries.

Maintaining their anonymity is essential to the integrity of the competition and ensures the judging, which takes place at the Sonoma County Fairground’s Showcase Café, is absent any predilections.

“I feel blind tasting is the purest form of the true evaluation of a wine,” explained Daryl Groom, chief judge and organizer of the annual competition. “There’s no bias.”

The NCWC contest

The judges are tasked with reaching a consensus on the hundreds of masked wines that have streamed in from makers based in Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Lake, Mendocino and parts of Solano counties.

During the contest, the judges are expected to taste from roughly 5,000 glasses of wine.

A high-speed dishwasher will reel out glasses in 3 minutes after they have been sanitized — not with soap but with a hot water rinse that reaches as high as 150 F.

In between sips, the judges will — collectively — consume 3 pounds of roast beef, nine loaves of bread and about 10 cans of Graber olives. The food helps to cleanse their palates so they can discern the differences in the wines.

To usher in unique perspectives, the lineup of judges includes winemakers, sommeliers, wine buyers and journalists, as well as four associate judges who will join in the discussion vetting the wines, although their scores won’t be tabulated in the results.

This year, NFL player DeShon Elliott, a 26-year-old safety who was signed a two-year contract March 15 with the Pittsburgh Steelers, is an associate judge.

Elliott said he is developing his palate and is taking part in the contest to continue that work. He said he has been fascinated with cooking for some time and possesses a keen sensitivity to aromas and flavors.

After Elliott and the other panelists share their opinions, they’ll ultimately decide which wine will rise to the top.

Vintners are hoping to snag the top honor, the crème de la crème overall sweepstakes winner — the Best of the Best.

The other sweepstakes medals include: Best of Show Sparkling, Best of Show White, Best of Show Rosé, Best of Show Dessert Wine, Best of Sonoma County, Best of Napa, Best of Marin, Best of Mendocino, Best of Lake and Best of Solano County.

When the contest concludes Wednesday morning, all the sweepstakes winners will be announced on The Press Democrat’s Facebook page (facebook.com/pressdemocrat) and on pressdemocrat.com.

Then, next week, in The Press Democrat’s April 10 Feast & Wine section the full list of gold and double gold winners, as well as the entire slate of sweepstakes winners, will be published.

The wines that receive 90 or more points in the competition are awarded gold medal status. And these wines, along with the double gold and sweepstakes winners, will be poured — alongside food pairings from local restaurants — at the North Coast Wine & Food Festival on June 15 at Santa Rosa’s Luther Burbank Center for the Arts. (pdncwc.com)

Mums the word

On March 25, soon after the wine arrived at the Showcase Café, 45 staff members began the elaborate process of concealing the identities of the wine.

The 1,000-plus bottles were transported in an air-conditioned white Ford semi-truck from the Windsor warehouse, Express Wine Delivery, where each was chilled at approximately 58 F.

Keeping the temperature of the traveling wine consistent, the backroom of the Showcase Café is a steady 59 degrees. The judges will ultimately taste the wine — both whites and reds — at 68 degrees room temperature.

Keeping the wines a secret from the judges involves a complicated tracking system with a total of five checkpoints, according to Debra Del Fiorentino, owner and CEO of Wine Competitions and Productions, who oversees competition logistics.

The incoming wine is checked against the computer data to make sure each entry is correct.

From there, the wine is coded and separated into 10 different pods for each wine panel, with a series of checks and double checks along the way.

In addition to these safeguards, the workers are all veteran staffers who each have anywhere from three to 40 years of experience working wine competitions.

“I don’t like to take on new people,” Del Fiorentino said. "I trust the people here.”

Del Fiorentino points out experienced staffers such as Lyn Smith, who she said has an “eagle eye.”

Working in wine competitions since 1983, Smith is 67 and retired. It is her job to catch any deviations and to resolve them.

Case in point, Del Fiorentino said, Smith recently noticed that a winery sent in a cabernet reserve when it meant to send in a cabernet. Smith will call the winery and ask it to either send a different bottle or to change its entry to the cabernet sauvignon reserve it sent.

Tracking the wines and keeping their identities under wraps is crucial, Del Fiorentino said.

“We’re 100% on top of it,” she said. “There are no mistakes.”

Tasting blind

As the judges vet a wine — sniffing, swirling and tasting it — the liquid in their glass remains a 48-hour mystery.

They only know the variety or type of wine, the vintage, and with wines that aren’t dry, the residential sweetness, Groom said.

And the judges, he said, prefer it that way.

“They love it and love the discussion and debate that goes with it,” explained the chief organizer, who doubles as the award-winning vintner of Groom Wines. “My experience with both consumer and professional evaluation is when wines are not blind, tasters can sometimes be swayed by knowing the brand, the wine price, the bottle type, the closure and even the package the wine is in.”

Tasting in the dark, sipping through a flight of anonymous wines, appeals to judge Liz Thach, now president of the Wine Market Council, an organization that does wine market research.

Blind tastings are like going on adventure, she said.

“As you observe, smell and taste each wine, you discover different elements, that eventually, on the finish, will all come together to create a final destination,” added Thach, who is also a wine instructor at Stanford Continuing Studies an art school on the campus of Stanford University. “Sometimes the destination is smooth and harmonious. Other times it’s lively and exciting. And sometimes it’s absolutely magical.”

You can reach wine writer Peg Melnik at 707-521-5310 or peg.melnik@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @pegmelnik.