Hosting a home wine making contest tomorrow

[NorCal]

I live in a community that has 20 acres of grapes, that sell to local wineries. The local Sacramento Home Winemaker Club is doing a group buy this year (2.5 ton Cab Franc). The person leading the group buy asked if they could come tour the vineyard. I said sure and why not have a little contest while we are at it.

I’m not sure if we will have 6 wines or 16 wines and they will be of different varietals / blends. I was thinking of how to structure the contest. There will be 3 or 4 judges, myself being one of them. It will be completely blind, with only the varietal / or blend known. We will score the wines individually using UCD scoring and award it gold, silver, bronze. Then the judges will reach a consensus on the wine; gold, silver, bronze. We will then take all the gold winners and award a best of show, which receives an engraved decanter.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[CK55]

I live in a community that has 20 acres of grapes, that sell to local wineries. The local Sacramento Home Winemaker Club is doing a group buy this year (2.5 ton Cab Franc). The person leading the group buy asked if they could come tour the vineyard. I said sure and why not have a little contest while we are at it.

I’m not sure if we will have 6 wines or 16 wines and they will be of different varietals / blends. I was thinking of how to structure the contest. There will be 3 or 4 judges, myself being one of them. It will be completely blind, with only the varietal / or blend known. We will score the wines individually using UCD scoring and award it gold, silver, bronze. Then the judges will reach a consensus on the wine; gold, silver, bronze. We will then take all the gold winners and award a best of show, which receives an engraved decanter.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

View attachment 50482

Sounds like a lot of fun. if i was up in that area i would participate.

 

[olusteebus]

looking forward to the process

 

[salcoco]

sounds like a standard competition. have fun

 

[Ajmassa]

Instead of only varietal/blend known to the judges, maybe the vintage should also be known. With UC Davis some categories take age into account. Would encourage more entries probably.

Just my $0.02

 

[NorCal]

Pretty good turnout. Here is a summary and some pics.

We had 18 wines entered and about 22 guests. Wines were judged blind but grouped by varietal. We ended up with 8 gold medal winners which were then re-evaluated for Best in Show.

The top prize Best in Show went to the 2016 Grenache from Smashed Vineyard in Loomis. 2nd place overall went to Shepard Cellars of Penryn for their (Clos du Lac) 2013 Cab Franc. Shepard Cellars also took 3rd place with their 2016 Meritage blend and 4th place overall went to Loder Winery for their 2015 Barbera.

After the competition we hosted a walking tour of some of our vineyards.