August 1, 2001
Good wines this year at the county fair! For the past fifteen years, I've been a judge for the home wine competition at the Santa Barbara County Fair. Some years the wines have been very good; some years they haven't. I remember one year, when I still lived in Santa Barbara, I had to gargle afterwards with a Maker's Mark sweet manhattan to get the wine taste out of my mouth.This year, the wines were very good I thought. Best of show went to Dave Renshaw for the strawberry wine. Best of red went to Phil Vacca for his cabernet sauvignon-syrah blend. Best of white went to Armando Cicchetti for his muscat cannelli, and best of fruit wine went to Dave Renshaw.
Gold medals were also awarded to Doug Coleman and Charlie Liatsos.
While the wines were quite well made, I thought, and the judging venue on a cool Saturday morning was delightful, there was a serious flaw in the judging procedure, I believe. And it didn't hit me until well after the judging was over.
The judging panel, it turns out, were the club members and home winemakers from the Central Coast Home Vintners club. This really smacks of conflict-of-interest. Most years I have judged, going way back to when Karen White was organizing the judging over at the Santa Maria Inn, all of the judges were involved in the industry professionally-commercial winemakers, wine growers, retailers, wholesalers, and wine writers.
This year, the judges from the commercial realm were myself and Jerry Moro of Morovino. At the judging, Hal Kaysen told me he wanted the members to learn how to judge wine. This is very commendable, and is a basic tenet of any wine appreciation course-to learn how to evaluate wine. The club, in fact, had a very detailed and useful judging form which each judge filled out for each wine being evaluated. But the fatal flaw was this: Score numbers from amateurs and professionals should never be combined. Statisitcally speaking, you are mixing scores from what are two separate universes.
On the judging panel I was on, we talked about each wine after we had tasted it blind. (Tasting blind means the judge has no benefit of seeing the wine label.) In wine evaluation, when judges discuss a wine, this is called consensual judging. At commercial wine competitions such as the Orange County Fair, the judges are isolated from one another, and scores are arrived at by mathematics.
One of the judges on our panel felt a particular wine had been under-rated. At the end, we tasted the wine again. On my way to work after the judging I thought "this is odd-was that her wine we retasted?" I think this question underscores the point that judges should never be on panels where they are in a position to evaluate their own wine, or know what wines are in the competition.
Some friends who had entered a wine pondered, do CCHV club members get "preferential" treatment over non-club members in the judging of wine? This would never be an issue had club members not been judging their own wines.
I remember one year when the group couldn't get enough judges and ended up with two judges, myself and Craig Macmillan. That year, I recall, we evaluated every category at my tasting shop in Los Olivos. There might have been 50 wines, and it would have been one of those Maker's Mark evenings after I had gotten home.
And speaking of Craig Macmillan, he was named "Winemaker of the Year-2001" by the Central Coast Winegrowers Association for his outstanding contributions to the industry. The award was presented as part of the KCBX Wine Classic.
Mr. Macmillan was recognized for his work with the CCWGA's Public Awareness Committee and the Wine Industry Task Force. His efforts have played an important role in fostering better relations between the vineyards and wineries of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties and environmentalists, county government, state and federal regulatory agencies, as well as the community-at-large.
"This is a unique honor," says Mr. Macmillan, a 32 year old Nipomo resident. "It feels good to be recognized for the work I've done over the past few years," he added. Mr. Macmillan is also the winemaker for Royal Oaks Winery on the Santa Ynez Valley.
Only in Santa Barbara-the nutcase capitol of California! Did you hear? The Santa Barbara city council had to give a low interest loan of a half-million dollars to Cam Sanchez, the new chief of police, so he could afford to buy a house there. I'm sure glad I live in north county!
Salud!
Bob Senn lives in the Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
