San Joaquin Valley Wine Competition Yields Winners

By Growing Produce Staff|July 15, 2011

The wines have been tasted and the judges have spoken, leading to a fascinating result in the San Joaquin Valley Wine Competition’s first-ever tri-partite wine competition. Three separate panels tasted wines entered into the competition, and the results clearly show that some wines are indeed preferred by particular groups, but many wines have appeal across the varied spectrum of wine drinking experience and taste.

The three panels tasted all wines blindly over the course of the day at the historic Fresno Met. Wines were scored utilizing a modified University of California-Davis 20-point scale. In simple terms, a Gold Medal wine is one where the judge would otherwise be compelled to drink the entire bottle. A Silver Medal wine would be one where the judge would order repeated glasses of the same wine. A Bronze Medal wine would be one in that while the judge enjoyed the glass, another wine would be selected for the next glass in a sit-down setting. After the formal tasting, members of the public were invited in to vote on their favorite wine — all of which were tasted blindly.

Each of the panels awarded their own medals, so it was possible for a single wine to earn more than one award, which happened on numerous occasions. Along with the individual panel awards, the highest point earners from each panel won a special award, and the highest point winner from all three panels combined was crowned as best of show. The competition will return in the same format next April 2012.

For a complete list of winners, and more information on the San Joaquin Valley Winegrowers Association, go to www.idrinkwine.net.