April 2013
By Mac
McCarthy/SavvyTaste
I had the opportunity and pleasure to join SavvyTaste
founder Lew Perdue in my third year of judging at the San Joaquin Valley 2013 Wine
Competition, which was held at the Ramos Torres Winery tasting room in
Kingsburg, south of Fresno, in the Central Valley of California.
This warm, flat, sunny land is the heart of California’s
enormous productive farmland producing rice, fruit, vegetables, most of the
almonds grown in the world, and is also the center of grape production.
Most of these grapes go into cheap jug wines and box wines (and eating grapes),
but also popular volume wines from Turning Leaf, Barefoot Cellars, Carlo Rossi,
Weibel, and Naked Grape, among many others. The wineries in this area also
offer, as it happens, some finer wines a considerable step up from the
mass-market high-volume wines, and the annual San Ramon Valley Wine Competition
is intended to highlight and publicize these efforts. I get a big kick out of
driving out from the San Francisco Bay Area to see what their efforts are
producing.
In previous years I've judged, the process was long tables
with the judges sitting side-by-side tasting flights in unison and judging on
their own, with little or no discussion or kibitzing. I have to say, it tended
to be a bit boring, especially since you start tasting and spitting before 9 AM,
finishing up at noon. The tastiness of the wines varies a lot; occasionally you
taste a really good one but you don’t know whose it is because it’s a blind
tasting – all you have is an ID number.
This year they have a new head of the competition and he
made a radical change – and I like the change a lot.
We were seated around tables, four or six judges at each.
Our orders were to reach a consensus of the table as to the wines we were
tasting – to discuss each flight and decide what we thought. This turned the
judging from a lone slog into an interesting, even educational social event.
The judging process was much simpler than in years past –
instead of a 20-point scale of several dimensions, this time things were
reduced to their simplest: We were to decide whether each wine we tasted
deserved a medal – Gold, Silver, or Bronze – or no medal at all. Couldn't be
simpler.
Our table included wine journalist and marketing consultant
Mike Stepanovich; Jessica, a young woman who works in the Ramos Torres tasting
room (I didn't get her last name; apologies); and a young winemaker, Nick
DeHart, of Fasi Estate Winery in Friant, a tiny town in the foothills outside
of Fresno.
Nick’s expert commentary on the wines as we tasted them was
invaluable: He’d point out aspects and elements of the wines that helped us
focus and form our opinions – especially when it came to the “balance” of the
wine, a key aspect that really summarizes the whole wine. Nick’s quiet guidance
was much appreciated; he didn't push his opinion or his expertise, he just
pointed out this or that feature of the wines, giving us things to think about.
It was also interesting to see Jessica’s reactions. She
often had a different take on the wines from the rest of us, liking some much
more than we did, disliking others that we liked. Just as interesting was
seeing how entirely self-assured she was in her tastes: She might have been
considerably younger than two of us, and she wasn’t a winemaker, but she knew exactly
what she liked, and was unfazed when
her opinion varied from ours. I liked that about her, especially since our
slogan here at SavvyTaste is “Drink what you like.”
To my disappointment, we got few whites and no Roses to
taste. But we did get and appreciated the ’10 Alicante Bouschet from Cedar View
Winery (which got a Gold), and the NV Alicante Bouschet from Silkwood Wines
(Best of Class), the ’11 Chenin Blanc-Viognier Blend from Pepi (Gold), and the
‘09 Petit Verdot from Cardella (Gold).
So a good time was had by all. Though I could see that the
approach in this competition would tend to yield more medal winners than a
complex 20-point scale might, it was a lot more fun. And we didn’t give medals
to any sub-par wines. I also recognize that this approach helps the competition
hand out more medals, which the winemakers love, of course, because it helps
move the merchandise, since so many casual wine buyers are much impressed by
medals (as by 90-point labels).
Another purpose of this competition is a dual one: To
persuade the public, over time, that the San Joaquin Valley is capable of
producing fine wines in addition to jug wines and eating grapes – and to reward
Valley winemakers who stretch to produce fine wines even when that’s not where
the volume or big money is.
So how are they doing? The first competition I judged, four
years ago, there were not many truly fine wines in the tasting; almost all were
drinkable, but only a couple of Syrahs and a really fine Chenin Blanc were
truly fine wines. The following year, the quality of the entries overall had noticeably
risen. I missed last year’s event. This year I only tasted two wines I thought sub-par and a few that, while fun to drink, could not be considered high level.
The majority were quite good; many were better than quite good; and a few were
indeed fine wines.
The San Joaquin Valley is heading in the right direction.
They aren’t Napa yet and, given their environment probably never will be; they
aren’t even Lodi yet. But they are good enough that if you find yourself in the
Valley it would be worth your time to search out a few tasting rooms and
checking them out. I’d especially like to point out Nick’s Fasi Estate Winery
in Friant, Saviez Family Estates in Fresno, Pepi in Parlier (near Fresno), and
Cardella in Mendota (smack in the Central Valley between Interstate 5 and State
99). And especially Cedar View Winery in Sanger, just east of Fresno: their
Syrah, Grenache, and Tempranillo are delicious.
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