Wine & Australia

posted by John in Wine Industry, Wine, Guest Bloggers

Greetings from Australia!  The land of big Shiraz, great beaches and the wild outback.  My travels (for work) have taken me from San Francisco to Sydney and currently to Melbourne.  From here I’m off to Hong Kong and then Taipei before I get home.
This trip is for my work but I’m hoping to find some time to explore some of the great Australian wine regions and drink some great Australian wine.  I’ve always enjoyed Australian wine and the winery I work for part time, Loxton Cellars, is owned an Australian.

The challenge when traveling for work is being able to find the time to do things that you want to do.  For me, that means visiting wine regions and Australia has many with the most popular (arguably) being the Barossa Valley.  However, most of the southern parts of Australia have wine regions.  My initial stay in Sydney had me in close proximity to the Hunter Valley but unfortunately timing did not allow me to visit it.  Yes, I did have a Sunday free but I used that day to attend an Aussie BBQ with mates of mine that live in the Northern Beaches area of Sydney.  Unfortunately, there were no “Shrimp-on-the-barbie” but there were some killer lamb-rosemary sausages and a great every day sparkling wine called Trilogy .

My time in Sydney went by very fast and I am now in Melbourne with the weekend looming.  The good news is that I’ve convinced some coworkers to take me into the Yarra Valley.  Yarra Valley is one of the lesser know wine regions in Australia but is producing a lot great wines including delicate Pinot Noirs and elegant, rich Chardonnays.  The wineries of the Yarra Valley are doing their part to show that Australia is not just about big cabs and fruity shiraz.
That’s it for now … I’ll follow up with my review of the Yarra Valley in my next blog until then here are my first impressions of Australia, Sydney, Melbourne and Australian wine:

•    Melbourne is more in tune with wine than Sydney
•    Beer is consumed everywhere by everyone and even with breakfast (yes, I did try this)
•    Majority of the wines use stelvin closures (twist caps)
•    The red wines are big
•    The white wines are hidden gems
•    The current exchange rate is giving me some great bargains

John Andrews is a software product manager during the week and is a professional Tasting Room staffer at Loxton Cellars in Glen Ellen, CA on the weekends.

Lights, Camera, Booze

posted by Mike in Website Updates, Snooth

Greetings readers of the Snooth blog! I’m Mike and I’m proud to announce that I’m the newest member of the Snooth team.

My main role as Creative Director, in addition to wearing snazzy hats, bossing people around, and perfecting a subtle yet unplaceable foreign accent, is to help Snooth grow and strengthen its brand. Since the very beginning of Snooth, I’ve been a huge fan of all the amazing features they’ve built, which is why I thought a good first assignment for me would be to create a Snooth video overview.

I figure it’ll serve as a great way to make sure current Snooth users know about all the site’s cool features, as well as entice potential users to join and help grow the Snooth community.

We’re planning on launching the high-resolution video tomorrow but thought we’d treat you to an advance screening. Feel free to offer any thoughts, as well as a suggestion for a wine/popcorn pairing.

Enjoy the show.

Wine Bloggers Conference : Snooth presentation

posted by philip in Snooth, Wine Industry

I had a great time at the conference and was glad to have the opportunity to present. I, along with Joel Vincent, spoke on “Monetizing your blog“. A lot of people couldn’t attend and many who were there asked for the slides, which are now posted online - here.

I’m now in San Francisco for a few days, recovering from the 400+ wines that were poured as well as the punishing day of road biking Jon Erickson took me on. (much much hillier in Sonoma than NYC).

Snooth Panel Tasting Program takes on Argentine Malbec

posted by Gregory in Snooth, Wine Industry, Wine

This past weekend I inaugurated Snooth’s Panel Tasting Program with a line-up of value driven Argentine Malbec. For this first test drive we proceeded in a very casual manner as we all got to know one and other and each person’s tasting style and speed.

I chose the theme and wanted to focus on Argentine Malbec for several reasons. Primary among them is the fact that times are getting tough and people want to know where to turn for value. It is undeniable that there are some compelling values among the wines sampled. The second point of the tasting was to take the pulse of Argentine Malbec.

There has been a virtual explosion in producer available here in the US market. The quality of these wines has never been higher and they are poised to break through in a significant way. Malbec is or will be the “hot” grape of 2008-2010. It was time to take a look at both the state of the grape in Argentina as well as the state of winemaking.

Malbec has a long and storied history in Argentina where it has produced some exceptional wines. Many of the producers now appearing on the US market are relative new comers to the game though they are blessed with many old-vine vineyards to source their fruit from. I was curious to see which path these newer winemakers are following to success, the full throttle, full extraction paradigm popular with jaded critics or something less in your face and  more suitable for the dining table. Perhaps something more representative of the grape, region and history of Argentine viticulture. The results speak for themselves!

Participants in today’s tasting

Stephanie Moreno – Sales Manager Astor Wines & Spirits
Beth Cotenoff – Vice President Cornerstone Communications
Renee Mack – Healthcare Professional
Leonardo Commercio – Manager Vintage Grape NYC
Ryan Hodges – Manager Park East Wines & Spirits.
Gregory Dal Piaz – Community Manager  Snooth

11th Place
2006 San Polo Auka 14.1% Mendoza - $13.00
It was tough for anyone to find anything nice to say about this wine. Stephanie found  “calamine lotion” on the nose. Beth felt it was “burnt and rubbery” while Leo was feeling charitable with “Chartreuse” . The group’s overall assessment was captured by Renee who summed the wine up as “burnt rubber, horrible”. I was alone in  liking this wine, thinking it very much in line with what people want and expect from malbec. Modern, flashy and obviously oaky, it’s not something I’d buy for myself but I know many people who would enjoy this.

10th Place
2007 Finca Flichman 13.5% Mendoza $9.00
This bottling proudly proclaimed it’s 3 months of barrel ageing on the labels but, unfortunately, that overt and clumsy woodiness turned off both Beth who “hated it” and Leo who found both the nose and palate dominated by
“charcoal and rocks”. Stephanie found the nose an improvement with “more intense floral and spice notes”. I also found the nose to be intensely floral and the best feature of the wine.

9th Place
2006 Luigi Bosca Finca La Linda 14% Mendoza $10.00
This sort of slid under the radar with nothing good said about but nothing bad either. It was “fine but boring” according to Beth though Ryan felt it was a “disappointing example” of malbec. I’d have to concur there, decent and acceptable but nothing more.

8th Place
2006 Budini Malbec 13.5% Mendoza $9.00
This was the wine that saw the most divergent opinions among the group. It was the only screw-top finished bottle as well. Coincidence? Leo Loved the “great nose, with fruit, spice, and tar”. That sentiment was not shared by Stephanie who felt the wine was “lean and green”  or Renee who characterized the wines texture and flavor as “Watered down”.  Again I was in the minority with this wine which I felt was light and fresh, a distinct departure from what Malbec usually is but a fine, simple table wine.

7th Place
2006 Navarro Correas Coleccion Privada 14% Mendoza $10.00
With this wine we step across an imaginary line into “big” wines. This certainly packed a big punch with “lots of blueberry” as Beth put it. “We getting big, jammy and hot, but I like it!” was Leo’s take on it and while Ryan felt that the “nose is much better than the palate, a little more rustic on the nose” my opinion mirrored that of the groups. that this was a big wine with lots of fruit but lacking a bit of liveliness and freshness.

6th Place
2005 Punto Final Reserva 14.7% Mendoza $16.00
If the last wine was hot this was on fire! Renee characterized it as “nondescript but I still liked this, it was almost my third best” and Leo felt it was “what people think of when they think of Malbec” but neither Beth nor Stephanie enjoyed the wine, both finding it hot and Stephanie would have expected” the added year in bottle to have mellowed out some of these harsh tannins, it’s just not balanced. I concur,  for me this was a disaster in a bottle overblown alcohol and bitter extracted tannins + vinous mess.

5th Place
2006 Lamadrid Reserve 14.5% Mendoza $15.00
This was an interesting style of wine. It is a classic “fruit bomb” that Leo found to be “clean juicy and round” though Renee commented on the “quite a warm finish, actually pretty hot” which is what I found as well. It was both juicy and hot! As big a fruit bomb as we had in this line-up and if that’s your style this might be a winner for you.

4th Place
2006 Sur de los Andes Reserva 13.9% Mendoza $12.00
I think everyone was impressed with this bottling. Just as with the Navarro Correas there was a jump up in quality with this wine. Stephanie found it to be” very pretty and full of blueberries” while Leo thought it to be “A bit fleshy but also a bit ashy and glue-like, reminds me of pinotage”, which was a refreshing change from all the Malbec that had spoken so loudly of Malbec. Ryan felt this was a” sure crowd pleaser”, a sentiment shared by Renee who found the wine “Enjoyable and made in an easy drinking style”.  I can’t add much, to me this smelled expensive and was a well balanced richly fruited winner!

3rd Place
2006 Familia Schroeder Saurus 14% Patagonia $16.00
Here was the only outlier of the group, A Patagonian Malbec, was it much of a departure from the Mendozan examples? Yes and no, it was made an a more elegant style than the wines that had preceded it with great aromatics of “sweet cinnamon and a little bit of funk” according to Beth, though Leo found too much of a “rubber-band” note on the nose to truly enjoy it. Ryan was intrigued by the cool aromatics of “Tar quality and black fruit”. I enjoyed this wine and I found it interesting that most of the comments regarding it were both positive and about the wine’s nose.

2nd Place
2005 Luigi Bosca Lujan de Cuyo 14.5% Mendoza $16.00
This was an almost exotic wine and was the wine that showed the most evolution over the course of the tasting. Initially the nose was rich in”soft cocoa powder and waxy fruit” according to Stephanie, there was array of notes “interesting aromas from violets to barnyard” as renee put it. Beth sussed out further nuances of  RM “white pepper and chocolate” and then went on the capture the quality that really set this apart” it’s rich but not jammy” as she said and I could not agree more. This is a wonderful wine that melds intensity of flavor and complexity with elegance and nuance. Really an “old world” example of Argentine Malbec and slightly reminiscent of the famous 1977 Weinert Estrella that remains the benchmark for the region.

1st Place
2007 Achaval-Ferrer 13.5% Mendoza $20.00
This very nearly unanimously chosen as the first place wine. It is as pure a wine as one is likely to find from Malbec with “rich blueberries on the palate” as renee put it. Ryan felt this was “Just what you expect when you open Malbec” and Beth characterized the wine as “earthy and leathery with an animally edge and approachable sweet tannins” Both Renee and Stephanie enjoyed the wines bright, friendly character.  For me the complexity of the Luigi Bosca just barely edged this out for first but the liveliness of this wine in the mouth and it’s fine balance make it a winner for sure.

Well that was it. There certainly are many fine examples of Argentine Malbec under $20 and while there seems to be a bit of a price quality corollary here there are wines at $15 or under that can play with the big boys. These are fine, interesting wines and Malbec really has found the right place to express itself in Argentina. As Ryan put it these wines are successful since these are the perfect “New wine drinker wine,affordable,approachable with nothing to be intimidated by”. I was surprised by several of these wines, my notes can be found in the GDP on Wine Forum.

Next up on the agenda: Zinfandel. If you are interested in joining the Snooth Panel Tasting Program please shoot me an email. I am always looking for new members to join in these fun and informative events!  Gregory@Snooth.com

Gregory Dal Piaz is the Community Manager at  Snooth, an avid Wine Geek with a passion for things Italian, and a long suffering Mets fan.  

Wine Bloggers Conference tasting insanity…

posted by philip in Wine Industry

I’m here at the inaugural Wine Bloggers Conference (#WBC for the twitterati out there) out in Sonoma and wanted to report in with a quick update.

Its a well attended event with most of the well known US based wine bloggers here. There are a few notable exceptions, but maybe they’ll be here next time.

Most wine bloggers blog in their spare time (ie. they have real day jobs) and so the conference is being held over the weekend (Friday to Sunday). As not everyone is here today, many are still in transit, the conference stuff is tomorrow. Today then becomes a mammoth series of tastings, with over 230 wines being poured in total.

We’ve moved from a lunch event with several wines to taste, past a 16 wine “speed date” style tasting and now to the blind tasting challenge (which I’ve ducked out of to write this). Next is a 100 wine New Zealand tasting, followed by a tasting dinner before the various after parties launch their tastings (I’m going to the New York and Oregon tastings later).

I can easily review 30-50 wines, and have had days of 75+, but 200+ wines is stretching what I can realistically write about and differentiate in such a short period of time. And 100 New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc’s? How many synonyms for grassy can I think of?

Despite what it may sound like, I am actually here for work - I’m presenting tomorrow on Wine Blogger Monetization (will post the slides here next week).

Signing off for now, but wanted to leave you with the power of the masses: at one point so many of the bloggers were twittering each other about their tasting notes on the wines they were trying that the Wine Bloggers Conference became the second highest trending topic on twitter:

Glossary

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth, Wine

Part of what I love about Snooth is the community. People are here to learn and grow together, to talk about wine (and sometimes about other stuff) in addition to buying wine to taste offline. One of the best stories I have to date started here and ended up on this thread.

Well, many thanks to Snooth member extraordinaire oceank8 and our new designer Mike, finally the Snooth glossary has been realized. It’s still in feature infancy. I imagine soon users will be able to add definitions, comments and links directly into this page, but it’s a great start. I know I’ve learned a bunch about wine by picking through it.

We appreciate every wine, tasting note, image, winemaker’s note — anything that the community adds to Snooth. We’re so happy to have your support — it’s making Snooth better every day and has us working even harder not to let you down!

Harvest by the numbers

posted by Dan in Snooth, Wine Industry, Wine, Guest Bloggers

With the daily polls touting candidate’s ups and downs, state by state, coast to coast, and with my fellow guest blogging Canadian’s recent statistical look at the Sonoma County Harvest fair wine awards, I thought I would follow trend and report on Harvest 2008, by the numbers.   So, no photographs to illustrate what has been going on this vintage at Larkmead Vineyards.  Instead I will attempt to paint a picture with words and numbers.

By the time you read this, our biggest grape buying client, Duckhorn, will have harvested their final fruit from Larkmead’s vineyard.  All vines will be fruitless and we will prepare for the dormant rehabilitation of the vines.  The vineyard is comprised of 113 acres of grape vines.  We are Cabernet dominant, with the vineyard planted to about 60% Cabernet.  Following that by the numbers is Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc (a vigorous vine that can reach six to seven tons of grapes per acre).  We have seven more grape varieties planted at Larkmead including a small patch of 120 year old Tocai vines that we make into the most aromatically delicious aperitif wine.   Our oldest Cabernet vines are 23 years and we harvested those grapes on September 15.   Based on tonnage this year, we will sell just under 50% of the grapes to other winemakers.  Duckhorn, listed above, and six other clients.

Our first harvest of grapes for Larkmead wine production was on August 15.  Our last on October 15.  Over the two month period which we brought in fruit, we pressed Sauvignon Blanc to barrel and have fermented six red grape varieties.  The five “noble” Bordeaux grapes (Cabernet, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot) and Syrah.   In that span of sixty days we actually harvested 16 times and divided those grapes into 22 fermentation lots.  Last year, we harvested 22 times and produced 30 fermentation lots.  Coincidentally, not only does it appear that we reduced workload by almost a quarter, but also our yields were down 25% as well.

The yields being down are a reflection of the weather we had to work with this year.   Weather is the unsung hero of the mysterious definition of “terroir”.  The earth and the soils of any appellation can be unique, but it is the weather patterns during the growing season that help accentuate the character of said soils.  This past year we had to contend with an unbearable frost season in March and April.  We saw temperatures during these two months dip below 40 degrees five out of seven days a week. We spent thirty plus nights during that period protecting our 110,000 vines from frost by igniting diesel in 500 odd Smudge pots positioned at the end of alternating rows and firing up the over head frost fans that circulate the warm air trying to escape.  We spent something to the extent of $30,000 (unbudgeted dollars) trying to fend off the frost that could cripple a vineyard.   A story from a Sonoma grape grower and the difficulty he had with frost this year goes like this: “This year I was out protecting against frost for 40 nights.  Last year, I was out four nights.”  Some farmers use overhead sprinkler systems to warm the vines during late night cold spells.  During this brutal season, some farmers depleted the water resources in their reservoirs that they would have used the entire year to irrigate their vineyards.  It was a tough time.  Cold that had been unseen in over thirty years.  We can only hope for another 30 years to pass before experiencing it again.

Following the frost, we saw uncharacteristic heat spikes during major vine development periods of bloom and fruit set.  Hundred degree days pounded us in early May, following in June, July, August and September.  There was a stretch of twenty odd days in August and September when temperatures were no lower than 90 degrees and topped 100 eight straight days during that period.

Coupled with no natural irrigation, i.e. rain throughout the entire growing season, we saw less than 15 inches of rain.   The vines reacted variably, and in most instances negatively with regards to cluster size and balance on the vine.  What we like to believe to be a healthy vine is roughly 28 grape clusters per vine weighing in at about a third of a pound each cluster.  On a macro level, that would equate to an average of four tons an acre with conventional row spacing.  Some of the extremes we encountered were vines producing cluster counts in the teens with weights following suit, 15 to 20% of a pound.  Overall for Larkmead, the vintage equated to a little over two tons an acre. Taking that one step further it can be forecasted in a healthy year that each vine will produce roughly one bottle of wine.  This year, we are averaging about one and a half vines per bottle.   So less clusters and lighter weights equal less wine.  And that is truly our only complaint, because the quality of the grapes harvested this year have been very good.   However, it is uncertain if this difficult growing season for farmers and winemakers who’ve see lower production levels and rising costs will impact the consumers with higher prices when these wines start releasing in one to two years time.

Dan Petroski is Assistant Winemaker at Larkmead Vineyards in Napa Valley. Dan has an MBA from New York University and worked as an Ad Exec in New York for several years, before switching it up and trading his suit for a move out west.

Struck By The Light

posted by mark in Snooth, Wine

Way back in June, we talked about running a little experiment. The details are here. The basic idea was to test how light and heat effected wine.

We used the 2006 Kenwood Sauvignon Blanc for the test. The control wine stayed in my wine fridge. The heat struck wine sat in a closed space outside, exposed to heat but not light. The light struck wine was exposed to UV beams from a few small lamps we purchased. I measured the UV output, which was roughly equivalent to what you might experience from the sun on an average day. (Before you cry foul, the UV lamps had this effect directly next to the lamps, and the sun is 1 AU away.)

How did it go? Here are my tasting notes for each wine. We blind tasted them so we wouldn’t be swayed by knowing which was which to start with.

Wine A) Flat and watered down. Flabby with no flavors. Fruit is completely washed. Heat damaged.
Wine B) Metallic with slightly more fruit than Wine A but basically still tastes watery. Light damaged.
Wine C) A little more spice / less washed out than the others. Control.

My guesses? Wrong. The real answers were:

Wine A) Heat.
Wine B) Control.
Wine C) Light.

Blind tasting is never easy, so I’m not sure how accurate this was going to be. To be honest, I think light damage is not nearly as bad. The wine was definitely drinkable, and still had some degree of acidity. On the other hand, I found the heat damage absolutely killed the wine. There was no fruit left.

I think we all already knew not to expose our wines to excessive heat or light. But now I do know better what to look for if I do come across an afflicted bottle.

Wine on the North Fork of Long Island

posted by philip in Snooth, Wine

The North Fork of Long Island, New York is home to some 30 wineries, who, together, manage around 3,000 acres of vineyards. The climate is maritime in the summer (weather predominately comes from the Gulf) and continental in the winter (when the weather predominantly comes from Canada). This results in a moderate summer, with a long growing season but a cold winter, which is fortunately moderated by the presence of water on three sides of the Fork.

Mark and I were there yesterday to attend Lenn Thompson’s Wine Bar, at Roanoke Winery where we tasted wines by Lieb, Roanoke, Wolffer Estates, Grapes of Roth as well as Lenns very own creations from Sonis Cellar (reviews on their way).

On our way out there we stopped by Paumanok Vineyards, which is the Long Island winery with the best overall scores on Snooth and was given a tour by the owner, Charles Massoud. Charles is a real scientist in the way that he farms the vineyards and it was a real pleasure to hear him talk about the soil, the climate and the winemaking process. Here’s an overview of what he told us:

Paumanok Sauvignon Blanc

The North Fork is a glacial moraine that was formed one million years ago and is part of the same system of moraines that stretch up and down the Eastern seaboard of the US - from Nantucket and Cape Cod, RI down to Long Beach Island in New Jersey. The soil is made up of sand and loam on a bed of gravel, and this is where the first, but certainly not the last, comparison with Bordeaux came out. The Bordeaux region of Grave literally gets its name from the gravelly soil. This means good drainage, a crucial element here given the high summer humidity and year round rainfall.

The coastal influences and the maritime summers result in great seasonal variability in the growing conditions (again, like Bordeaux). However, this is New York and, unlike France, it can get brutally cold in the winter. The vines go dormant in the winter, but if the temperature drops below -15F then they will die. Although Upstate New York and even New York City easily gets colder than that, the ocean moderates the temperatures just a touch and with a little help from global warming the vines make it through the winter.

Spring frosts are a huge problem out here, as well into April or May there’s the chance for a sudden dip in temperature and once the vines have begun to bud they are extremely sensitive to cold (see an earlier post on how wineries combat frost). This year alone, Paumanok lost over 80% of their Chardonnay crop to frost. Chardonnay is particularly sensitive to this as it buds early. Of their 15 acres of Chardonnay they harvested 5 tonnes, instead of the 15 that they would have expected. Although they lost the crop, the vine did have some secondary and tertiary buds break later in the year - this doesn’t result in good grapes for wine, but does keep the vine alive.

By the time summer rolls around it begins to get really hot, and although the Ocean influence results in high humidity, it also keeps the temperatures slightly lower than what the rest of Southern New York sees. Here’s where Charles’s talk got really interesting, as he told us about the tactics specific to Long Island that winemakers use to optimize the sugar production of the grapes during the growing season.

First, they defoliate the bottom 6-8 inches of the vine, which is where the grape clusters hang. This promotes good airflow and helps avoid mildew, rot and other problems that the humidity might create. Having just plucked a bunch of leaves off the vine, the next task is to ensure that there are enough leaves left to be able to produce enough sugar to ripen the clusters. 12 mature leaves are required per grape cluster, and as the vines tend to have around 30 leaves after the defoliation, this would allow the vine to ripen 2.5 clusters of grapes per branch. So, someone then walks every row and cuts off the extra clusters until there are only 2 clusters per branch maximum.

Sauvignon Blanc Vines showing the defoliated 6″ at the base of each branch

At this point every vine has a maximum of 2 grape clusters hanging from it, with at least 24 leaves per branch, and thanks to the defoliation the grapes can survive the humidity and are also exposed to the sun which further allows them to ripen. Paumanok’s science behind the farming, and the meticulous attention to fine tuning the crop were clear from Charles’s explanations. He is a man obsessed with the production of the fruit. Someone who believes that winemaking can not make up for poor fruit, and that the best it can hope to do is to not ruin, what is otherwise, a perfectly ripe clean grape.

Partway whole berrry fermentation, showing the ripe clean fruit

Here are the reviews of the wines I tried.

Snooth Blog – Sonoma County Harvest Fair

posted by John in Snooth, Wine Industry, Wine, Guest Bloggers

I remember when I was growing up in Toronto (Canada, eh) that one of the annual events that I always wanted to attend was the Canadian National Exhibition at the Exhibition fairgrounds.  Locally this  event is affectionately called “The Ex”, and the slogan was “Let’s go to the Ex”.  I thought this was the biggest fair in the world and I thought it was the only one of its kind.  Of course I was 10 at the time and didn’t have access to the internet.  I would find out later that every community has a fair like The Ex.

The Sonoma version of this is called the Sonoma County Harvest Fair.  With its roots in agriculture it makes sense that this type of event is tied to the annual harvest.  The event is held in Santa Rosa at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.  Unlike the Ex, the Sonoma County Harvest Fair does have a rural, farm feel to it and no cheesy games that are impossible to win.  There is a farmers market, a petting zoo, live shows and horse racing.  However, with no disrespect to the sheep dogs, the real draw of the Sonoma County Harvest Fair is the wines.  In conjunction with the harvest most wineries will release their fall wines.  The goal of having these newly released wines medal at the fair and create a buzz around the winery.  For a winery to compete for medals it must meet only one condition, the wine that is submitted must use grapes from Sonoma County.  This means that it is possible for a Napa based winery to actually compete.  Although, it is rare it is not unheard of.

For this year, I was lucky enough to work the wine event.  It is a great place for winery to “show off”, show how many medals you won and talk about how good your wineries wines are.

Wines Competitions

There are a few things you should know about wine competitions and the way medals are awarded.  A wine competition isn’t like the Olympics.  There isn’t one gold, silver and bronze awarded.  Wines are not judged against the competition, they are judged on their own merit.   This means that in a particular class, style and varietal of wine there can be multiple gold winners.  Not intuitive but kind of makes sense.  So what are rankings and what do the mean?  Here is a cheat sheet based on my definitions:

The wine tasting pavilion is the place where visitors can taste all the wines that won medals.  913 wines were awarded medals.  Okay, not quite that many were available for tasting.  Wineries usually pour the wines that won Gold or Silver medals and there were 446 wines that won Gold or Silver medals.  So roughly half the wines that medaled should have been available for tasting.  However, wineries usually attend if two or more of their wines got silver or above.  I noticed a bunch of wineries that didn’t attend so, let’s just say that there were 400 wines to taste from.  I managed to try 31 of them.   Don’t ask me what my strategy was for the wines I tasted.  You’ll be disappointed.

Overall, it was a great event and when I got home, I got to thinking about how the medals were distributed by things like grape, winery and appellation.  There as a nice set (913 elements) data to play with.  I decided to do a bit of analysis.  For my full time job (the mortgage paying job as I call it) I have access to a Business Intelligence product called Spotfire.  It allows me to look into large sets of data and do analysis and find some nuggets of information.  Using Excel and then Spotfire to play with the data I came up with some very interesting pieces of information.

First off I did some basic counts on the medals.  As expected Chardonnay and Pinot Noir lead the way in terms of number of Golds awarded.  What was surprising though was the number of Cabernets that received gold medals considering that Cab is not considered a primary grape in Sonoma.

Then I thought, does the cost of wine really affect judging … well I looked at the most expensive and least expensive wines to get medals.

Next, I decided to look at medals by appellation and the average price for a wine that medal class.  Interestingly enough the average wine price fall in the $20 to $40 range.  Gotta love Sonoma!

Then I took that data above, which is consolidated and took a look at it more granularly.  Below is a scatter plot of all the wines that medaled.  Each of the squares represents a single wine.  On the left we have the price of the wine and along the bottom we have medal type and vintage with each medal type.

Again, it is interesting to see that most wines that got medals were under $50.  And the most popular vintage was 2005.  The last thing I wanted to see is what appellation earned the most amounts of medals.  Not a big surprise, Russian River Valley, the current Rock Star of Sonoma County, is the big winner.  Then, we are followed up by Dry Creek Valley (the home of big zins) and then Alexander Valley, the mini-Napa, the region in Sonoma that can make big cabs.

So there you go … the Sonoma County Harvest Fair from a statistical point of view.  I bet you didn’t see that coming.