Will work for wine

Last week was the Grand Harvest Awards Wine Competition hosted by Vineyard and Winery Management Magazine. Since 2003, my brother Kevin and I have worked behind the scenes pouring wine and doing other prep work so the judges can fairly decide which wines are medal worthy. It’s a coveted opportunity for us to learn about wine and, best of all, taste wine.  

This competition prides itself on being a bit different than the others:  

What sets Grand Harvest Awards apart from the rest? One word…terroir. Established in 1990, it is the only wine-judging event in North America that is based on terroir – a group of vineyards (or even vines) from the same region, belonging to a specific appellation, and sharing the same type of soil, weather conditions, grapes and wine making savoir-faire, which contribute to give its specific personality to the wine.  

Participating in a wine competition is labor intensive but always a good time.  We’re often the same group of wine drinkers hard workers consisting of vineyard owners, hobby winemakers, wine educators and people who simply love wine.  As soon as we’re caught up on each other’s latest news, we get to work.  

Day One is all about the set up. All of the wines that have been sent in to be judged need to be organized, boxed, moved, unpacked and reorganized in proper order for the next day’s pourings.  

Day One - Getting ready to move the wine.

 

   

Day One: Grouping the wines to be judged

 

Day Two is when the judges arrive and we pour the wines into numbered glasses, serving them in groups of anywhere between 8 – 12 at a time.    This year there were 23 judges divided into seven different groups tasting over 1400 different wines between them.      

Pouring for a blind tasting.

 

A judge's view.

 

Judge Eric Degerman, Managing Editor of Wine Press Northwest (photo by JAG Public Relations)

 

Bottles set aside after judging. These will be taken home at the end of the day.

 

  Day Three is a lot like Day Two but with an added bonus:  when the judging is finished we get “paid.”  This is worthy of a bit more explanation…  Every winery that submits a wine for judging includes an extra bottle in case there is a problem with the first.  It’s insurance in case the wine is ”corked” (funky smells or tastes that can only be detected after opening) or if the bottle breaks.  Once all of the judging is complete, all of these duplicate bottles of wine are gathered and evenly distributed into “The Mosh Pit.”    

The Mosh Pit after the Grand Harvest Awards

 

 Ahhh, The Mosh Pit.  Doesn’t look like much, does it?  But in those boxes are the reasons a lot of people choose to volunteer in the first place.  We’re all wine geeks, in some way or another, and getting paid in wine seems absolutely fair and more than worth the time we took away from our regular, paying jobs to be here.    

One last thing before I wrap this up…  An unexpected perk of working this year’s competition was meeting wine judge George Taber, the only wine writer that witnessed the famous 1976 Judgement of Paris where a panel of top French wine experts turned the wine world upside down by choosing unknown California wines over France’s best.  He wrote a well known book about it that you can find here.  It’s a detailed account of the story that inspired the movie, Bottle Shock .  

George Taber, author of Judgement of Paris.

 

So that’s the Grand Harvest Awards.  Trust me when I say that this over-simplified version doesn’t even begin to cover all that goes into a wine judging.  There are countless people who put in many long days and late nights before someone like me even shows up.   Most importantly, they do it to ensure quality wines get recognized and into your wine collection.  So take a look at this year’s medal winners by clicking here and see how your favorites did.  Better yet, discover something new and pick up a bottle the next time you’re at the wine shop.  Prost!  

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