Wine Rival competition brings together who’s who of Sonoma, Napa wine world for blind tasting tournament

There were hints, if you looked closely at the crowd gathering on the porch and back deck of the private Napa Valley estate, that this wasn’t an ordinary Sunday evening summer soiree.

Some people, wearing suits and jackets, sported lapel pins signifying their mastery of wine. A couple of women wore T-shirts emblazoned with wine references to pop culture: one, in a nod to the movie “Napoleon Dynamite,” read “Vote for Pedro Ximenez.”

Kassandra McPherson’s white T-shirt simply said “Barbera” in a pink Barbie logo font that she acknowledged was a shout-out to the Barbie movie that had just opened.

McPherson, who works for Promontory Winery in Oakville and is the mother of an 18-month-old, was here at the Wine Rival competition with 31 other people from Sonoma and Napa counties and beyond who hoped to sniff and sip their way to victory at a blind tasting executed in a tournament bracket system.

The contest was open to anyone up to the task of correctly identifying the varietal, origin and vintage of a wine — sight unseen — based on its flavor characteristics, acidity and alcohol content.

The prize this evening was $2,500 and a seat at the Wine Rival finals this October in Chicago, where the winner will take home $25,000. The competition is the brainchild of Adam Sweders, a Chicago-based actor and voice-over talent turned sommelier.

“This is the first year we’ve ever gone outside of Chicago,” said Sweders, who felt the Sonoma and Napa region seemed an obvious choice when taking the competition on the road.

The event drew a who’s who of the Northern California wine world. In addition to restaurant sommeliers and winery employees, there were wine collectors, consultants and armchair connoisseurs.

“I wonder who’s working in restaurants tonight, because everybody’s here,” mused Beki Miller, the sommelier at Sonoma’s Wit & Wisdom.

Miller scanned the room, sizing up the competition and noting a sommelier who had made the trip from Redwood City as a potential top rival in her bracket.

Their reasons for being here were as varied as their backgrounds.

Brandon White, a Sonoma-based marketing consultant, looked ready for a night on the town in a pair of sequined loafers.

“I’ve had a couple of idiot-savant moments at wine-tasting parties,” he explained. “And it’s a chance to network and go out on a Sunday night, because Sonoma closes at 4 p.m.”

Sebastopol native Nick Meidinger was there with his partner, Miranda Bruehl, who until recently was the tasting room manager for Thomas George Estates in Healdsburg. They came because they thought it would be a fun night out and helpful for Miranda, who is studying for her Wine and Spirits Education Trust level 3 certification at Odyssey Wine Academy in Healdsburg.

The competitive angle appealed to Meidinger.

“What opened my eyes was the competition part. I played sports my whole life,” he said. “When you bring wine into the mix, it sounded cool.”

Of course, the $2,500 prize was also a big draw.

“The (sommelier) exam is so expensive,” said McPherson, who attended the event with six other members of her Napa wine-tasting group. They meet weekly to study and practice for their Master Sommelier certification, the highest, most intensive sommelier certification in the world.

“My credit card debt for this exam alone is through the roof. We’re all broke,” she added to sympathetic nods from the other members of her group.

Group member Christina Stanley, the incoming wine director for the Slanted Door restaurant in Napa, said they were all competing yet cheering each other on, but they hadn’t discussed what they would do with the prize money if one of them won.

Uncorking a competition

Sweders called everyone together on the back deck to explain the rules. In the first two rounds, contestants would face off at a table with a judge. They’d have 90 seconds to evaluate one wine and write their answers on a card that would be scored up to 10 by the judge.

Once the competition was whittled down to eight, they’d have three minutes to evaluate two wines, a red and a white.

Sweders came up with the idea for Wine Rival on a trip a few years ago to the Wisconsin Dells, where he watched NCAA basketball tournament bracket analysis on TV.

“This was originally called Somm Madness when it started in 2017, until I got a 13-page cease-and-desist letter from the NCAA,” Sweders said.

He changed the name to Wine Rival, but his goal of turning wine tasting into a sport remained. The blueprint for the competition is the World Series of Poker, he said.

“If we can watch 60-year-old overweight men play cards, we’ve got to be able to do something with wine,“ Sweders said.

He wants to turn the competition into a six-episode TV series, hopefully by the holiday season this year. He already has Audry Morrissey, an Emmy-winning producer from “The Voice,” backing the project.

Sweders has a knack for showmanship. Last year’s Chicago competition began with the kind of buildup you’d see at a professional sporting event: lights, smoke and a prerecorded intro by Jim Nantz of NFL and NBA broadcast fame preceding the blast of “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC over the sound system.

The real drama, he said, is when the nose meets the unknown in a glass.

“The most intriguing, sexy part of wine is the blind tasting,” Sweders said. “People think it’s really cool, like some kind of parlor trick.”

So it was that everyone gathered around the parlor of a century-old home in Rutherford to watch their peers in the first rounds of competition. And there were a few surprises.

Meidinger, a self-described beer guy, was a bit of a dark horse. As a truck driver who hauls thousands of cases of wine every day in a 2012 Kenworth 18-wheeler, he probably deals with more wine by volume than anyone else in the competition. He has no formal wine training, though he did manage to best a sommelier from Bourbon Steak restaurant in Los Angeles and move on to the next round.

There was a perfect score. There were ties that led to taste-offs.

The woman in the “Vote for Pedro Ximenez” shirt explained away her early exit.

“Albariño is my Achilles’ heel,” she said.

The vibe, though, was pure fun as the DJ played music between rounds and eliminated contestants enjoyed the open bar on the back patio.

But the energy and level of interest changed as the table was set for the final four: McPherson was up against Micah Clark from The Charter Oak restaurant in St. Helena, while Miller from Wit & Wisdom would face off against Jienna Basaldu, a former Bay Area sommelier who recently relocated to Phoenix and boasts several blind-wine-tasting titles.

The DJ pumped Nelly’s “Hot in Herre,” and Sweders announced a change to the style of play.

The final four, he explained, would compete individually and would now be required to give their answers verbally as they evaluated each wine.

When it was Miller’s turn, she put her nose in each glass and declared, “That’s wine,” cutting the tension before turning serious.

She turned her focus to each wine, sipping then aerating the taste with a slurping sound before spitting.

“This is fruit-driven ... acidity is medium ... alcohol is above 14%,” she said before declaring the region of origin, varietal and vintage in the allotted time. Yet she didn’t score high enough to advance.

Despite the stiff competition, there was a definite sense of camaraderie as the crowd gathered in the doorway to watch McPherson and Basaldu emerge victorious to the final round.

Taste of victory

The room was nearly silent as the final round started, save for the sound of creaking as an eliminated contestant tiptoed across the hardwood floor for a better view.

Basaldu and McPherson had similar impressions of the white wine; both suggested it was from France. It turned out to be an Italian pinot grigio.

The red wine proved to be the path to victory.

Both women noted its pronounced tannins, medium acidity and alcohol content above 14%. Basaldu concluded it was a Tuscan sangiovese, while MacPherson declared it a 2018 cabernet sauvignon from Napa.

While the judges tallied their scores, Morgan Gray, a Santa Rosa resident who works for Reeve and Bloodroot Wines in Healdsburg, explained how two clearly talented sommeliers could have such divergent views of the same wine.

“The globalization of wine has changed this,” she said, noting that the rigid standards that once distinguished Old World winemaking were beginning to ease, allowing producers to experiment with nontraditional varietals and aging wine in new oak barrels.

Sweders soon stepped to the front of the room to announce the winner.

McPherson had nailed the final red wine, a 2018 Silverado Estate cabernet sauvignon from Napa Valley, sealing her victory.

The room erupted in applause and cheers for both women as the DJ cranked “You’re the Best Around” from the “Karate Kid” soundtrack.

As McPherson soaked in her victory, Sweders seemed happy with his decision to bring Wine Rival to Wine Country.

“It’s the closest-knit group I’ve ever seen,” he remarked. “Everyone here knows each other.”

Sweders presented McPherson with a giant check for $2,500, which she said will help make a dent in her tuition bill as she studies feverishly to pass her final test to become a master sommelier, a rare achievement earned by only 168 people in the Americas chapter, 25 of them women.

And for her Napa tasting group that practices for exams with weekly wine flights, she said, the next round is on her.

You can reach Staff Writer Jennifer Graue at 707-521-5262 or jennifer.graue@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @JenInOz.