It\u2019s no secret why winemakers enter competitions. Besides seeing how they match up with other wineries, the luxury of stamping a bottle with a gold medal or a 90+ score can catch a consumer\u2019s eye and boost sales without having to say another word.<\/p>\n
![\"null\"](\"http:\/\/www.bkwine.com\/winefair\/2006\/swf-2006-galleries\/thumbnails\/CRW_4250.jpg\")
But which competitions winemakers choose \u2013 and there are plenty available \u2013 is a different story. And because most people are savvy enough to know that an \u201coutstanding\u201d recommendation from Wine Press Northwest carries more weight than a best in show award from Podunk, USA, wineries need to be somewhat selective about when and where they enter competitions.<\/p>\n
Wade Wolfe of Prosser, Washington\u2019s Thurston Wolfe Winery<\/strong> uses a set of criteria that I think many winemakers follow. He first anticipates how well his wine will fit into each event\u2019s categories, avoiding those that lump a wide variety of styles into one where the competition is uneven and meaningless. He also looks at the region where the event is held, making sure it\u2019s in a market where his wines can be distributed.<\/p>\n Also a factor is the evaluation technique and the number of judges. Wolfe notes that for some events, \u201c\u2026there is a single reviewer and the wines are not tasted blind. (We\u2019re) less likely to submit to these because of the potential biases of the reviewer.\u201d<\/p>\n Many events now post the backgrounds of judges in addition to their award winners on the web. This can give you a feel for the types of wines entered in the competition as well as possible preferences in the judges\u2019 tastes.<\/p>\n The bottom line is that all levels of recognition are not created equal. So do a little research and be discriminating when you purchase that next bottle of award-winning wine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s no secret why winemakers enter competitions. Besides seeing how they match up with other wineries, the luxury of stamping a bottle with a gold medal or a 90+ score can catch a consumer\u2019s eye and boost sales without having to say another word. But which competitions winemakers choose \u2013 and there are plenty available […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-bellingham-herald"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}