Matters of taste put to the test

Jim Harre discusses the New World Wine Awards with fellow judge Kate Radburnd. Photo supplied.
Jim Harre discusses the New World Wine Awards with fellow judge Kate Radburnd. Photo supplied.
Wine awards may may be a dime a dozen in New Zealand but do they make a difference? Charmian Smith looks at how they are judged.

The results of this year's Air New Zealand wine competition are out.

This year the trophies have been divided between Hawkes Bay and Marlborough, with one going to Nelson, no doubt to the disappointment of producers in Central Otago, Waipara, Martinborough and Gisborne.

Wineries that won gold medals and trophies have been broadcasting their success and attaching little medal stickers to their bottles, while those that did not remain silent and hope for better luck next time or rail against the unfairness of the judging process.

Those that did not enter the show either shrug their shoulders or look with curiosity at what the judges have highlighted this year.

Meanwhile, consumers, whether they are sceptical of wine competitions or not, rush to buy the trophy wines and gold medal winners, making do with silver if the golds have sold out, which they do very quickly.

Dr Rosemarie Neuninger found consumers were sceptical of wine awards, who the judges were and a...
Dr Rosemarie Neuninger found consumers were sceptical of wine awards, who the judges were and a lack of transparency in some of the awards. Photo by Christine O'Connor.
With more than 10 annual wine competitions or shows in New Zealand, there are a lot of medal-winning wines on shelves vying for our dollars.

Wine judge Jim Harre, who has been judging at the Air New Zealand competition for 22 years, judged 14 shows internationally this year and is chairman of four, including two in Asia, says he believes wine judging in New Zealand is robust.

''You are either good as a judge and you are there, or you are not and you are dumped. Most competitions in New Zealand draw on the same pool of judges.

"The top four - the annual Air New Zealand, New World, the Easter Show and the bimonthly Cuisine reports are the most easily recognised - all the same judges rotate throughout so you get an amazing consistency of judging and you get this depth of experience in judging,'' he said.

Not only do judges, a mix of winemakers and wine professionals, need to have a good palate and concentration, they need to be willing to be involved in a consensus.

"Wine judging is consensus decision-making so you will always be bound by the three judges. The...
"Wine judging is consensus decision-making so you will always be bound by the three judges. The other problem is the wines are judged on the day as they appear in the glass. You are not supposed to try and create any influence of how the wine is developing and what its potential is" - Wine judge Jim Harre.
Often several overseas judges are involved in the bigger shows to bring an international perspective.

The chairman of the show sets the parameters of what styles they should be looking for and makes a decision when the judges cannot reach a consensus.

When we talked, Mr Harre had just come back from judging the Australian Small Winemakers Show and had a few days at home in North Canterbury before he left for Auckland to judge in the Air New Zealand Awards.

A former Air New Zealand in-flight service director and still one of the airline's wine consultants, he came from a family that had been involved in wine for a couple of generations.

One brother was a winemaker and another owns wine bars and restaurants in Paris.

• There are two types of wine shows in New Zealand, Mr Harre says. Industry shows, such as the Air New Zealand and Bragato awards, and regional shows, some of which grew out of local A&P shows, which are designed for the industry to benchmark against itself.

However, they also have a commercial component in that medal-winners use them in their marketing.

Commercial shows, such as the New World Wine Awards, of which Mr Harre is chairman, are designed to help consumers choose wines to buy - in this case, the top 50 wines.

''They have the same judges, the same standards and judging criteria, but it's a different process towards what you are trying to achieve,'' he said.

At New Zealand wine shows, which are modelled on the Australian ones, judges assess about 120 wines a day.

They are told the variety of the wine, the year and possibly the region, but no other information about it.

After each flight, the three judges and one or two associate judges in the panel discuss the wine and reach a consensus, recalling any wine that may have been assessed as gold medal standard and any they disagree about.

If they cannot reach a decision, the chairman will be called to advise.

''If the three judges give the same wine gold, silver and bronze, they are all saying it is a quality wine but it's the degree of quality that has to be decided. Bronze starts at 16 out of 20 so there is only four points between them,'' Mr Harre said.

After medals have been awarded, the gold medal wines are reassessed to find the trophy winners.

Some of the overseas competitions at which he judges, such as the British Decanter World Wine Awards owned by the magazine Decanter, give judges too much information about the wine for the tasting to be truly blind, he says.

The International Wine Challenge owned by William Reed Business Media is more robust, with the wines being tasted several times and rechecked by the chairmen for consistency, he said.

In the US, where he judges in San Francisco, the judging is faster, with 170-190 wines a day, and there is no discussion, the awards being the average of the three judges' scores.

In Europe it is different, with four judges instead of three in each panel, each in a cubicle by themselves judging one wine at a time.

The highest and lowest scores are dropped and the score is the average of the other two.

In Asian competitions, there has been a focus on training local judges and encouraging their confidence, he said.

It is not surprising that, being involved in so many shows, he believes in the show system.

''It has flaws, like every system does, but overall I think the system is a very robust one and the end result that comes out is a pretty consistent process,'' he said.

Nevertheless, it is well known a wine will do well in one competition and not so well in another a month or two later.

''Wine judging is consensus decision-making so you will always be bound by the three judges. The other problem is the wines are judged on the day as they appear in the glass.

"You are not supposed to try and create any influence of how the wine is developing and what its potential is,'' Mr Harre says.

This may be a disadvantage for wines that are made to develop with bottle age, as fine wine does.

Sometimes a competition may have a specific focus.

A complex wine with clever winemaking may win gold in an industry competition but a month or two later in an aromatic competition it may not do so well, because that style does not express the aromatics well.

A few months later, it might have developed and two judges might go bronze and one silver, so it ends up with a bronze, he said.

''The winemaker says `these people have no idea what they are doing. I won a gold in this competition, I got a silver in another and now I've got a bronze for the same wine and it's only six months','' he said.

Occasionally, companies have been found to present wines for judging that are different from the wines available to the public, although they have the same label, usually after a judge later tasted the regular wine and noticed it was different from the wine in the competition.

Some wineries regularly enter competitions.

Villa Maria, which styles itself ''New Zealand's most awarded winery'', consistently does well in shows.

Other wineries, particularly some of the highly rated ones, do not enter - after all, they cannot risk their $40 or $80 or $120 bottle not doing well, and they have other means of marketing their wine.

• Consumer ares sceptical about awards, according to Rosemarie Neuninger, who recently completed a PhD at the University of Otago investigating the influence of wine awards on consumers' perception of wine quality.

Consumers were really sceptical in terms of a lack of trust in the awarding process, who the judges were and the lack of transparency in some of the awards, although they still took note of top awards, especially the main ones such as Cuisine's Top 10 and Air New Zealand's trophy winners, she found.

New or inexperienced wine buyers were more likely to be influenced by award stickers, but they might not actually enjoy a highly awarded wine.

Most were confused and put off by numerous stickers on bottles that looked like award stickers but, when they read the small print, they discovered they were not actual awards or were irrelevant, like ''best wine with pizza award!''

Such things made some consumers feel cheated by all awards, she said.

However, Mr Harre believes the wine show system creates an unbiased view of the wines that are entered.

Because many of the most highly regarded wineries do not enter shows, gold medal winners are not necessarily ''the best''.

Rather, a gold medal is an independent endorsement, he said.

''If it's won a gold medal, it doesn't necessarily mean you are going to like it. What it means is it's a technically really good example of that wine and it also has an X-factor.''

 


Wine awards

The results of the Air New Zealand Wine Awards and other New Zealand shows can be found at wineshow.co.nz



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