Could this sales pitch be more useless in todays environment?

WINE TALK
1

And who really pays attention to those ‘State Fair’ awards?

This deep purple, sumptuous 2005 x wine won Gold at the San Francisco Chronicle Fair.

I also see lots of this stuff on Aussie bottles.

2

the average, non-winegeek, consumer?

3

You would be surprised . . . .

That said, that specific competition is pretty good and gets a lot of wine from a lot of good producers . . .

When at wine festivals, though, it’s amazing how people are drawn in by ‘bling’ - scores, awards, etc. Not that the wines are not deserving of the accolades, but some wineries certainly go ‘over the top’ in plugging these . . .

Cheers!

4

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Gold Medal isn’t even the top prize, is it? There are usually “Top In Class” or something, then several “Double Gold” winners, and THEN a dozen or so Gold Medal winners. I think the advertising is misleading, the average reader will think that “Gold Medal” winner means it was the best wine in the competition.

I remember not that long ago I saw a wine advertised as a “Bronze Medal” winner. I first thought “not bad, third place in the competition”. I looked it up, though, and it turns out that by the time you get to Bronze winners, you’re only in the top 100 wines or so. In fact, I’m not even sure that everyone doesn’t at least get a Bronze.

5

Could be Mike…
95 pts JM!
newhere

6

Cris, Veronica, Paul Lin and I can all tell you about how incredible the ‘double gold’ wines are from the last San Francisco wine competition, or whatever it was called…
[barf.gif]

7

true enough. and from a retail standpoint, the average consumer sees “Bronze Medal” and thinks “third place.” i think that’s more useful than useless in today’s environment.

8

Dear G-d, don’t remind me!

9

For years my standard response to wineries telling me they got a Gold Medal at The Orange County Fair was “Those people sent B-1 Bob to Congress over and over, you really wanna listen to them?”.

10

What I find odd is when they mention that it finished first out of 800 wines (or some other insane number.) I’m thinking to myself, did the judges really taste 800 wines? And if they did, was Charles Shaw number 800???

Another thing I find odd is that a lot of chefs get invited as judges. Why no somms? Or wine buyers from retailers?? Oh, that’s right, we wouldn’t find anything worth drinking neener

11

Ian, when the late GREAT Jerry Mead was alive, I was invited and participated in several such affairs and there were other “qualified” people as well. And, no, we did not taste 800 wines, we were in panels that tasted maybe 50 wines of a type, passed on the top bottles to later panels where we gave medals. Tasted maybe 100 wines over two days, much less than at Vinitaly for instance.

Miss you Curmey!

12

I live in Australia for half the yr and over the yrs I have devised a strategy that is-the more medals a bottle has on it the less likely we are going to like it. Of course my other strategy is if the guests bring Champagne then I will open ABA-Anything But Australia.

13

Don’t some County Fairs judge pigs as well? newhere

14

I really don’t intend to show any disrespect for County Fair wine competitions. They are what they are and they vary widely in both the quality of wines entered and the quality of judging. I have no factual basis on which to critique the judges. From what I’ve been told, they are asked to award lots of medals… and they do. One recent event went as follows:

TOTAL Awards Summary:

4 STAR GOLD 26
GOLD 328
SILVER 605
BRONZE 585

TOTAL AWARDS 1,544
TOTAL ENTRIES 3,089

Half the entries got a medal. So… for that competition, 4 star golds are one thing and bronze is quite another.

What any of these awards mean is clouded in both the specifics of what the ‘winners’ competed against and who the judges were.

I don’t think the majority of this says anything much about the quality of the specific wines except in the context of that particular event. It provides an exposure for wine at fairs and gives the wineries something to market to the masses. Given the need for the majority of consumers for help in their purchase decisions, it’s not surprising nor anything to get all worked up about. With the bulk of wine being sold in supermarkets, in most states, it’s no wonder wine follows other products in the quest for something to shout from the shelf.

I used to think this was the perfect rationale for the independent wine shop’s existence … getting the buyer past the label. I guess I still do, but economics has changed a lot of that thinking of late.