Tuesday Travels—PTG, Part Deux (or "Doux," for the sweet wines...)

Yesterday, I smuggled you into the inner sanctum of my four-person “Purple Tongue Gang” judging panel at the San Francisco International Wine Competition. www.sfwinecomp.com

Today, in “Tuesday Travels,” we’re going to pick up where we left off. (Here's a pic of all the judges. That's moi, back row left. Major thanks to volunteer extraordinaire Susan Reed, for juggling everybody's cameras and catching us while our smocks were still white!)

Join me now, along with Wilfred, Kevin and Jerry (see yesterday’s Purple Tongue pic) as we return to the black-curtained judging room of “Panel D.” We’ll enjoy two long days of “blind” tasting together (usually, all we’re told is the wine varietal or blend, and the vintage) and I'll show you how the judging process unfolds.

Here’s how it works. After our fearless panel leader (Wilfred Wong—he’s a master at it!) writes down the scores from each judge for each wine of that particular “flight” (see yesterday’s post), the horsetrading begins.

Sometimes we all agree. More often, our scores vary a bit. After all, we’re not just programmed differently (from a genetic standpoint); we also have come to this point in our lives with a widely varied gestalt of sensory input. And potentially, we just plain like different things. (More on how this works tomorrow, in our “Wine 101 Wednesday” post.)

So, if we report scores for a wine that range all over the map—(“Bronze plus. Silver. Silver plus. Gold minus” is pretty typical; “Gold. Silver. Bronze. No medal!” occasionally happens)—we don’t panic. And we often go back to any wine that “asks us for” another look.

One scoring method is based on the highest rating that three judges agree on (“Silver” in the first example). Another equally (or perhaps even more) valid approach takes an impressionistic view—Wilfred, for example, might say “It’s a very strong bronze right now; let’s retaste it to see if it has silver potential.” Sometimes we decide that it does, and one or more judges will “go up” to a higher score. (And sometimes the opposite happens; we’ll lower a score if we pick up any problems.) And we always call for a repour from a new bottle (quite literally—Wilfred actually rings up Paul, who's in the back room pouring, via cell phone!), for any wine that we determine to be “corked.” (More on that coming soon.)

But how do we arrive at our scores in the first place?

It’s a delicate balance of objectivity (we need to be able to recognize the pros and cons of a wine that can raise or lower our ratings, including “varietal correctness” as well as questionable characteristics or flaws such as Brettanomyces, or “Brett,” which one of my panel members describes as “a horsey blanket,” and “oxidized” flavors that can come from overripe grapes or careless winemaking) and subjectivity (after I’ve tasted it and figured it out, how much do I like it? And where do I draw the line on Brett—I, for one, really enjoy the added complexity in certain reds of a little “saddle leather”). Whew. Long sentence!

When we’ve scored the whole flight, Wilfred reads out our final decisions to Paul, our panel coordinator (“Wine A is Silver. “B” is No Medal. Then Bronze, Silver, No Medal, Gold…” right down the alphabet to “M” or whatever). Two judges sign Paul’s master form (we take turns), then the paperwork goes to the magic computer in the secret office.

On the rare occasions that all the judges on a panel agree on a “Gold” award, that wine receives a “Double Gold” and is eligible for the Sweepstakes round on the final day. (More sweeps info, plus audio with my voiceover explanations, coming soon.)

Then we dump the wines from that flight into our spit bucket. Our highly efficient volunteers clear the dirty glasses (& dump the buckets—very important!), and then the cart with our next flight of wines comes wheeling in. Then the next one. And the next one.

Counting a full day Saturday, plus Sunday morning (the afternoon is devoted to Sweepstakes), the PTG of Panel D plowed through 20 flights of wine, with anywhere from 10 to 18 wines in a flight. After we dispensed with our whites on Saturday morning (first Chardonnay, then Sauvignon Blanc, which thankfully included some Golds and fantastic Double Golds), we started earning our “Purple Tongue Gang” moniker with Cabernet, Zinfandel (the PTG’s “signature” varietal), Syrah/Shiraz and several other reds.

At one point, I showed one of the volunteers my aforementioned stained tongue. She laughed, then said “At least it matches your lipstick.”

I wasn’t wearing any. (It's not only tongues that turn purple!)

See you tomorrow, for Wine 101 Wednesday.

Cheers,
Rosina
gilded fork, wine, wine writing, Welcome to Wine Country, Rosina Tinari Wilson