Richard Nichols travel, hiking, art and poetry: Wine Competition

Brenda and I just finished a week as volunteers for the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, held at the Cloverdale Citrus Fair. This is the largest wine competition for U.S. wines in the country.

Here is a piece from the Home Page:

"On January 8th, 2010, the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition concluded the annual week of judging at the Cloverdale Citrus Fairgrounds in Sonoma County, California. Over five days, 63 professional wine experts within the media, restaurant and hospitality, education, winemaking and retail wine industries tasted and evaluated a world-record breaking 4,913 entries, a number that maintains the competition's status as the largest competition of American wines in the world.

Consumers can look forward to tasting the Sweepstake Award Winners, along with hundreds of additional wines, at the 2010 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition Public Tasting, February 20th held at Fort Mason Center's Festival Pavilion in San Francisco. The Public Tasting is an annual celebration allowing wine lovers to compare their favorites to the top picks announced at the judging while enjoying great food and breathtaking views."

The effort to pull this off takes months of work, culmination in over 100 volunteers converging for 4 1/2 days to serve wine to judges and take care of many other tasks. My job on a team of three was to open and pour wine for one of the 14 panels, serving as many as 12 flights (a group of 10 or 12 wines) every day for 3 days. Brenda did this last year, and this year headed up the crew that cleaned glasses and put them back into circulation.

Care and concentration to get the right wine in the correct numbered glass, kept us riveted to the job. The coding of the bottles (because the tasting is blind) took a number of weeks to get codes on maybe 15,000 bottles in over 100 categories. The dedication to getting this done without ANY mistakes is remarkable. The sweepstakes culmination Friday takes only 2 hours to reduce all those wines down to 5 sweeps winners. 44 judges each tasted over 110 wines (4900 glasses).

You may wonder why anyone would volunteer to be on your feet running around all day, trying to keep from spilling wine, or making any mistakes. There are two reasons: if you like wine, then being around this is very educational, and, secondly, we get wine as a reward. Not just any wine, but premium well and thoughtfully made wine. Brenda and I brought home over $2000 (retail price) in wine for our work.

And the Winners Are…

The 2010 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition Sweepstake Winners are:

Sparkling	J Vineyards & Winery, Russian River Valley J Brut Rose
White	Keuka Spring Vineyards, Finger Lakes, New York 2008 Gewurztraminer
Pink	Bray Vineyards, Shenandoah Valley, Amador County, CA 2008 Barbera Rosato
Red	Graton Ridge Cellars, Russian River Valley, Paul Family Vineyard 2007 Estate Pinot Noir
Dessert	Watermill Winery, Walla Walla Valley, Washington 2008 Late Harvest Gewurztraminer