Why great wines won’t enter wine competitions
As well as En Primeur, April is the UK’s season for wine awards (ref. DWWA and IWC) and while their results will not be made public until much later in the year, it takes but a mere mention of them to get their critics worked up.
Now, the main criticism of these awards is that the best wines are rarely entered into these competitions and therefore that when Decanter or the IWC promote the ‘best wines in the world’ they are not telling the truth. This attack actually bears a great deal of examination.
Why? Well, much of it has to tally with what I like to examine in the world of wine (see, for example, my blog on deconstructing wine, or on Gallo and Pinot Noir) namely our impressions of what we are meant to taste versus what we actually taste.
Let’s admit that the detractors of wine competitions have a point: the winners of awards, trophies or gold medals are not the best wines in the world because the likes of Château Margaux, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Pingus, Clos d’Ambonnay, Gaja, etc. are not entered. If we could be sure these great wines would win, that would be a fair point. But there is no certainty.
Imagine that they are indeed entered into these competitions. Tasted in blind conditions along with their peers, I can promise you that there is no guarantee that they will come to the top of the pile.
Look at some of the results of previous years. In fact, look at the results that come around later this year – I can assure you there will be wines that get silver or bronze medals that are understood to be better than those that won greater accolades.
Now I don’t pretend that means the tasters are useless – they patently are not. If you find me a wine taster that can, without fail, pick out, blind, wines the wines that are the best (by best I mean more expensive, more coveted) I’ll show you a charlatan.
But if a judge tastes a wine on its merits (i.e. without the label), then I defy a great domaine or a great château to be certain their bottle will rise to the top of the pile.
And why can they not be certain? Because they know there is a chance that the tasters might have a bad day; that the wine might not travel well; that the tasters won’t appreciate the nuances of the wine, etc. It is well understood that great wines can only lose by entering such competitions.
This premise alone (that you cannot be sure Domaine de la Romanée-Conti will get a gold medal at a wine competition where wines are tasted blind) merely underlines in fat black marker pen how slim the margins are between a great wine and a relatively unknown wine. They are slim enough for the great estates around the world to be scared.
Now I know for a fact that great wines might well get greater, and eclipse their more mediocre competitors. But it is a sobering thought that the refusal of the top wines to enter wine competitions illustrates just how slight a margin there is between the great and the good. Often, that margin is as thick as their label.
While the ‘great wines’ are in a class of their own and (like Prime Minister’s?) can only lose by putting themselves in a face-to-face competion,it is, nevertheless, an instructive exercise to analyse the French ‘Foires de vins’ catalogues – which delight in highlighting the bronze, silver and gold medals attained by their selection of wines.
You will find that they are roughly in inverse proportion to the market price of the wine!
Catching up on some of your older writings, Oliver! Good stuff here.
We can’t be surprised that labels and brands matter, and that people pay for them even if they are proven to be inferior to cheaper substitutes. And they are in a competition of a different sort — not race horses, show horses.
I say this: Collecting and holding a few spectacular bottles to one day serve them is a very gratifying experience. Not for what they are intrinsically, as you have proven in your post. But rather, for the possibility they embody — a perfect pairing, a wedding toast, a special anniversary, the opportunity to close a business deal, or the honor you give to those you share the label with. And if it disappoints? Or you fail to prepare it fully, or open it too soon, or too late, or your glass smells of cardboard because you failed to use the microcloth instead of the paper towel this once? Well, that’s life! Anticipation is a very fulfilling emotion for an optimistic future. Reality often doesn’t square with the build-up.
Someone throws you the keys to a Ferrari and you plan an unforgettable experience in Vegas around it! If it’s the Hyundai — well, aren’t you glad your CO2 footprint is so sensible and could you please pick up the milk on the way back?
When it comes time for you to give your daughter away to her betrothed, I will be shocked if you are raising your glass toasting the good fortune of the new family with a champagne that requires you to say, “Yes but in blind tasting these gold medallions say it’s as good as Krug”.
You probably have the Collection vintage already picked out for the happy occasion, and that’s entirely appropriate.
I enjoy you topics and your perspective. Cheers.
Miguel,
I don’t begrudge indulgence now and again. I also think what you’re hinting at is that part of knowing the price and the…pedigree, I suppose, is a decent slice of the enjoyment pie. Fair enough. But only to a certain extent. I would love to drive a Ferrari (I even know what it would be: a 250 GT Lusso) but I never have – I don’t have the means or the friends that are required for that – which seems to be a pretty similar story when we talk about top-end wines. Ok, I’m exaggerating, but you see my point.
I wont be considering my daughter’s nuptial beverages until I have one (daughter, that is).
O
I was pointed to this article from LinkedIn.
I agree with your premise, Olly, that great wines don’t enter competitions because there is only a potential downside for them. However, I don’t agree with your conclusion – that there is only a small margin of difference between great wines and those that do well in competitions.
In my experience, from both inside and outside, competitions are set up in a way that will favour an in-your-face, show-poney wine and will probably downgrade an elegant, subtle, complex wine.
In the real world, wine lovers place more value on the latter.
The reason great wines don’t enter competitions like Decanter and IWC is that their producers and agents have no confidence in the abitity of the judging panels, in the format of those competitions, to discern the truly beautiful (using your women and wine analogy) from the heavily-made-up.
You only need to look at the results, especially from regions with complex wines. You will see a mass-produced, simplistic but concentrated oak-chipped party wine winning gold while a single-vineyard, terrroir-driven, multi-layered, incredibly pleasurable wine gets “Commended”.
This is not because the complex wines are not actually that great. The same critics who sit on the competition panel regulalry rate these complex wines very highly – when they are tasted in a non-competition setting, which may also be blind.