Judgment Day 1 – Whites, Dry Rose's and Dessert wines

I arrived to find four judging stations arranged with crisp white tablecloths, water and crackers and a team of WOW organizers scurrying in an effort to order and bag the 55 wines slated for the days tasting.

Just as the judges completed their first flight … an important philosophical discussion ensued. Is this an absolute judgment comparing these wines to the world’s most perfect wines bearing its varietal name? Or are we judging on more of a relative scale to congratulate and encourage those who have succeeded in a valiant effort to create a wine that is well balanced has good intensity, varietal typicity and a pleasing finish? Here! Here! All agreed… Let it be the latter.

Next order of business: Is there really a need for such complex scoring sheets rating each major characteristic of each wine… lets pitch the WOW formula and rely on our trained palettes. Lets taste and evaluate without such detailed dissection on paper, then discuss and compare scores. All agreed. This is going to go much faster now.

So busily they tasted and scored, tasted and scored … wrote comments… re-tasted some for relative comparison, then discussed and sometimes debated.

If I had to guess, I’d say there was unanimous agreement about 70 percent of the time. But for the other 30 percent… there was very different interpretation of whether a particular characteristic in a wine was pleasant or distasteful. While one thought it was a unique characteristic, another thought it was a flaw. More discussion… “Ok, I see what you mean”…. Or … “I think it’s quite reflective of the local terroir and I quite like it.”

Truly there were some un-debatably good wines… some un-debatably distasteful ones… and a small percentage that were perceived so subjectively different that some element of democracy had to be employed.

Southern Oregon wines were subjected to descriptive terms like phenolic, heavy, light, low and high acidity, orange, peach, apple, aromatic, potpourri, diesel, over/under-ripe, cherries, prunes, earthy, herbaceous, balanced, typicity, thin, dull, extracted, oaked … and a lot more...

Two hours and 45 minutes later .. fait compi! Lunch anyone? Lets serve the winners.

A lovely McCulley House lunch ... followed by tastings and winemaker tours at RoxyAnn, Schmidt Family Vineyard, and Troon. More information... discussion of wine making processes and preferences...

Whew...my brain is saturated. I'm exhausted.

Tomorrow... 110 Red Wines... purple teeth at dinner ;-)