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Judging wine is no different then judging any other art form. Take paintings, for example. Just what makes a Jackson Pollok worth more than my niece's finger-painting?? Well, it is a number of things..
Sure, you can have the purely analytic side of things, but in the end the value is more based on fame than content. It can also be based on the frame (packaging) and who is actually selling it. Then there is also history. A gold bar is valuable, but a gold bar once owned by Cleopatra is worth WAY more.
From a purely analytic side of things, why would anybody expect that wine would be different than a painting? I am always surprised when people are shocked that judging wine is within the realm of the subjective. Of course it is! It is an art form and (as the old cliché goes) beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Wine can be judged differently by different people at different times.
I like competitions that use the UC Davis scoring method with a panel of several judges. The UC Davis method breaks down the wine into areas of focus. Points are awarded for Clarity, Color, Bouquet, Acidity, Sweetness, Body/Texture, Flavor, Bitterness, Astringency, and overall quality. These individual scores are then added up for the total score of the wine being judged. All of the judge's scores are then averaged into a final score.
This is the method we used during the "Big and Bold" competition. Using this method during the competition worked well and (on average) I feel that the scores were amazingly consistent, but of course wine judging is still subjective and there were some differences, but these differences were off-set (or smoothed) through averaging.
My suggestion is to look at the competition that you enter. You want to find competitions that focus on the particular wine you produce. Do not, for example, toss your barrel aged cabernet into a state fair competition where the focus is mostly on fruit wines. Also try to look into the background of the judges. Is your wine being judged by some amateur winemaker in New Jersey
or is it being judged by a panel of expert French sommeliers?
Sure, you can have the purely analytic side of things, but in the end the value is more based on fame than content. It can also be based on the frame (packaging) and who is actually selling it. Then there is also history. A gold bar is valuable, but a gold bar once owned by Cleopatra is worth WAY more.
From a purely analytic side of things, why would anybody expect that wine would be different than a painting? I am always surprised when people are shocked that judging wine is within the realm of the subjective. Of course it is! It is an art form and (as the old cliché goes) beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Wine can be judged differently by different people at different times.
I like competitions that use the UC Davis scoring method with a panel of several judges. The UC Davis method breaks down the wine into areas of focus. Points are awarded for Clarity, Color, Bouquet, Acidity, Sweetness, Body/Texture, Flavor, Bitterness, Astringency, and overall quality. These individual scores are then added up for the total score of the wine being judged. All of the judge's scores are then averaged into a final score.
This is the method we used during the "Big and Bold" competition. Using this method during the competition worked well and (on average) I feel that the scores were amazingly consistent, but of course wine judging is still subjective and there were some differences, but these differences were off-set (or smoothed) through averaging.
My suggestion is to look at the competition that you enter. You want to find competitions that focus on the particular wine you produce. Do not, for example, toss your barrel aged cabernet into a state fair competition where the focus is mostly on fruit wines. Also try to look into the background of the judges. Is your wine being judged by some amateur winemaker in New Jersey
or is it being judged by a panel of expert French sommeliers?
