The Competitions We Offer:
Finger Lakes International Wine Competition
This is a great wine competition held in Rochester, New York, as a charitable event
benefiting 'Camp Good Days and Special Times, Inc.', that provides benefits to children
and their families that have had cancer or another life-threatening event in their
lives. They allow entries from commercial wineries located in all of the wine-producing
countries around the world and the event has the broadest list of categories of
all of the competitions we include. In 2006 there were over 1700 wines submitted
for judging. Although the current database combines several of the categories into
two large groups for hybrid and Native American varietals, with the 2007 events
those will be expanded to more accurately reflect the diversity of awards given.
The Finger Lakes competition offers the 4 standard medal levels: Gold, Silver, Bronze
and Double Gold. The Double Gold must be a unanimous decision of the judges, all
of whom are wine professionals. The competition also awards 2 special wine awards
for the highest rated Riesling, the John Rose Award, and the highest rated true
Ice Wine, the Crystal Grape Award. Take a look through the results and expand your
wine horizons to include some wines you have probably not heard of or seen in the
California Wine Scene. And if you happen to be in the Rochester New York on May
5th, you may want to give the dinner and tasting a swirl!
Monterey County Wine Competition
The Monterey Competition, which is part of the Salinas County Fair, has an unusual
approach for a California County Fair; they allow wines from any commercial winery
or private label wine produced by a professional winemaker with no restrictions
on country of origin. Award categories are the standard Gold, Silver and Bronze
with sweepstake awards for best of show in the white, red, spirits, sparkling and
dessert categories.
Most of the judges in the Monterey Competition have worked together on this event
for almost a decade and are all wine professionals including winemakers, restaurateurs,
wine journalists, etc. There is one chief judge who is responsible for coordinating
the individual judges and arbitrating any disagreements on results. All wines are
tasted blind and results are based on what is expected and accepted as a style for
that particular wine. In 2006 there were 1170 wines submitted and 683 medals awarded.
There is a tasting event that takes place to showcase the award winning wines as
a part of the Salinas County Fair in May each year.
California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition
Started in 1855, this is the oldest wine competition in California and certainly
one of the state’s most prestigious. Entrants are restricted to grapes grown and
wines produced in California. The one exception to the rule is if the wine producer
is in one of the neighboring states of Oregon, Nevada or Arizona and 75% of the
grapes used in the wine are from California.
The wines are categorized into groups of similar wines and tasted together as a
group and each judge identifies which wines he/she feels should receive gold, silver
or bronze medals. The results are entered into a computer and given a numeric score.
The score is based on the following: Bronze 85-87 points, Silver 88-93 points, Gold
94-98 points, Double Gold 97-99 points. In addition, if all four judges give a wine
a gold medal the award will be raised to a double gold medal. The computer will
identify the highest scoring wine in each of the varietal categories for each of
the eleven wine districts in the state and that wine is then the winner of the “Best
of Class of Region” award for the wine’s varietal class (Zinfandel, Chardonnay,
etc.). The Best of Region and Best of Show awards are based on further tastings
of the Gold and Double Gold award winning wines. The Winery of the Year award is
given to the winery with the greatest number of winning wines with the highest awards
won as well as the percentage of wines entered that won an award.
One interesting twist of the California State Fair is that they also recognize the
vintners that produce the grapes for the award winning wines. These vintners become
eligible if the wine carries an estate bottled or single vineyard designation on
its label.
We include the results for 2005 and 2006 competitions in our database.
Foothill County Fair Competitions
We have captured the results from three local county fair wine contests in our medals
database; El Dorado, Amador and Calaveras. These competitions get a great deal of
participation from local wineries making them an excellent way to get information
on foothill wines. The focus of these contests is generally on California wineries
and fruit grown in California, or Foothill sourced fruit. Sometimes, as in the case
of El Dorado County there are restrictions on the size of winery that can submit
entries for most classes if they are from outside of the Foothill region. There
is one large exception in El Dorado, the Rhone Varietal category allows entrants
from any winery of any size located anywhere in the world. We include the 2006 results
for all three counties and the 2005 results for El Dorado County.
Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Morning News began sponsoring a wine competition in 1985 that was originally
restricted to wines made in the United States. The restriction on country of origin
was lifted in 1999 to allow wineries in countries throughout the world to enter
the contest. The participants now represent 24 states and 16 countries. The competition
has grown in prestige as it has grown in entrants and the number of wines judged
has risen from 570 for the first year to 3078 in 2006.
The wine competition is held every year in Dallas and is judged by wine professionals
who work in the business on a daily basis. The wines are kept in a room separate
from the judges and are all given a number. The wine glasses are then numbered to
match the wines and delivered to the judges to ensure anonymity. In any given year
25% to 37% of the wines entered receive either a gold, silver or bronze medal.
San Diego International Wine Competition
This San Diego based competition has been in existence since 1982 and is open to
commercial wines from around the world. The competition is sponsored by the charities
of the Social Service Auxiliary of San Diego. As a condition of inclusion in the
contest each entrant must agree to donate a case of any wines that win awards to
be auctioned later in a benefit for those charities. The more than 40 judges are
wine professionals and most of them are veterans of either this competition or other
similar competitions. In 2006 awards were given to 1,232 wines from throughout the
world.
We include the results for 2005 and 2006 competitions in our database.
San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition
 The Competition began as
the Cloverdale Citrus Fair Wine Competition in 1983 as a competition between the
wineries of three local counties. The Chronicle began its sponsorship of the competition
in 2000 and tasting moved from Cloverdale to San Francisco. The wine regions allowed
to participate grew from the original 3 counties to all of Northern California by
2001 and now includes wines from all wine regions of the United States. In 2006
over 2639 wines received awards from the over 900 wineries that sent in entries.
This is the largest competition held today to showcase American wines.
The Chronicle Competition utilizes panels of 5 wine professionals as judges for
each individual group of tastings. The wines are brought out blind and the panel
discusses the wines. The panel then comes to a consensus of what, if any, award
the each of the wines should receive.
Indiana State Fair Wine Competition
This is the largest US wine competition outside of California and in 2006 included
more than 3,000 wines representing the greatest wine producing regions in the world.
The wines categories included are not just your standard European varietals and
classes, but also includes fruit wines and Native American varietals more
commonly seen in the eastern and mid-western United States then in California.
Founded in 1992, the competition is work of the State Fair and the Enology department
of Purdue University and has a distinquished panel of wine judges from around the
United States. Like many other major competitions, there is a tasting offered
of the award winning wines, and for 2007 it happens on August 1. Check our
links page to get to the official website for more information.
Click here for the Demonstration Medals
Database.
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