Designing a winemaker tasting event - ideas?

[NorCal]

I have hosted a Cab Franc group buy for local (and one not so local @crushday, pic below) home winemakers. I was talking to George about having a get together the evening before and thought it would be nice to have a tasting event the evening before. I’ve did this a few years ago and we ended up with 12 wines to judge. I think I could easily double that, if I made a few calls.

Here are my thoughts, assuming 24 wines. Do the blind wrapping. Separate the wine and the winemakers in 4 groups. You cannot be in the group that your wine is in. That group then evaluates the wines in your group (sheet is coded to the bag and bottle) and picks a winner from the group. Then the top wine from each group goes to an independent panel, which will include a Somm and other knowledgeable wine people, to pick a winner.

While the judges are working, all the bottles are unwrapped for everyone to try.

Thoughts?

 

[crushday]

I.CAN.NOT.W8!

This will be so fun. I love the idea @NorCal and have no ideas to add. I will be there for sure!

 

[NorCal]

I happened to meet a leader of the Sac Home Winemaker club at a vineyard that I’m helping a winery with this morning. Before I could ask him if he thinks the group would be interested in a get together / contest, he asked me if we were going to do one this year. Done!

 

[NorCal]

I‘m also thinking that I’ll ask everyone to bring two bottles. One for the blind wine tasting and one for the prize. All the second bottles will be on a table and then based on how you finished on the blind tasting, you would be allowed to go pick from the table.

 

[Ajmassa]

i think this sounds fantastic @NorCal . Not sure how you’ve done it in years past as far as judges picks but i think would be cool to use the standard UC Davis 1-20 pt system. And go down the checklist for each wine with maybe a 1-2 sentence note on each category (if anything is noteworthy). Having notes from other winemakers is always beneficial.

this way even the wines that didn’t win their group can have an idea how they faired. So if a 17 loses to an 18, its still nice to know you’ve got a theoretical silver medal wine

 

[Rice_Guy]

The vinters club holds contests with between 125 and 150 samples so I have judged and I have entered.
* you could do bags with a code number on them, but it is easier to just not put a label on the bottle and rubber band an entry card/ number on the bottle.
* I am used to seeing a point system as wine maker magazine uses
* as a wine maker I value the written comments judges give, especially if there are suggestions about what to fix/ how to fix.
* the club also has done something called “speed wining” (like the bottle is speed dating and I get to listen to the comments) which is fantastic for feed back, could be better if I took notes ,,, don’t see how to do this with pandemic rules

 

[CDrew]

Interested for sure.

 

[joeswine]

how about outsiders???

 

[NorCal]

Hey @CDrew, for sure. Very interested in seeing your latest. @joeswine or anyone willing to make the trip to Nor Cal area, it would be great to have you. PM me if you are interested.

 

[NorCal]

i think this sounds fantastic @NorCal . Not sure how you’ve done it in years past as far as judges picks but i think would be cool to use the standard UC Davis 1-20 pt system. And go down the checklist for each wine with maybe a 1-2 sentence note on each category (if anything is noteworthy). Having notes from other winemakers is always beneficial.

this way even the wines that didn’t win their group can have an idea how they faired. So if a 17 loses to an 18, its still nice to know you’ve got a theoretical silver medal wine

Hey @Ajmassa, I've used the UCD scoring at an event and found that since we hid the grape variety (instead grouped them by similar variety and blends) it made the detail scoring difficult and found there were too many boxes and detail to be practical for our level of competition, judges and time to do it all.



The next time I condensed the categories and it went much better. I'll probably tweak it again for the approach I'll be using this time, but I see it being closer to the consolidated scoring sheet.