That's me, digging into the Pinot Noir class. Senior Judge Cameron Douglas, MS, and Associate Judge Emma Jenkins, MW, are in the background.

For years, I’ve resisted commenting on wine shows. I’ve read some of the online bashing, about how medals are given away like candy on Halloween; about how some show judges don’t know much about wine; and about how, since shows typically charge an entry fee, the awards they bestow are essentially worthless. I’m sure there are more complaints, but that’s not the point.

The real reason I’ve not written at any length on wine shows is that I typically don’t get to participate in show judging. But last month, I was invited to be the America’s international judge at the Air New Zealand Wine Awards. Run by New Zealand Winegrowers–the country’s national wine body–it is New Zealand’s Super Bowl of wine shows.

Five revolving panels of four judges each (three senior and one associate) evaluated nearly 1,500 entries–blind–over a three-day period. But this does not mean I tasted anything near that many wines. For relatively small classes, a single panel looked at all of the wines; for larger wine classes, like Sauvignon Blanc, the class was divided among multiple panels for initial judging. I don’t think I ever tasted more than 120 wines in a day, which made each day tiring but not exhausting.

All of the prospective gold medal wines (scoring 18.5 points or more out of 20) were looked at a second time by the panels judging them, and at that point some wines were knocked back down to silver and others elevated to elite gold (19 points or higher). The wines were tasted a third–and sometimes fourth–time to award the various trophies.

Now that I’ve given the background, here are some observations from the judging.

1. Only a very small proportion of wines entered received awards, meaning those that did are probably worth trying–especially those that received gold or silver.
2. All of the judges were highly skilled and experienced. The majority of them were practicing New Zealand winemakers, leavened by the presence of a few other wine professionals, and three international judges, Charles Metcalfe, from the UK, Michael Hill Smith, MW, from Australia, and myself.
3. Because so many of the judges were winemakers, there was very little tolerance for perceived winemaking faults, particularly characters typically associated with brettanomyces. Awarded wines tended to be very clean and fault-free.
4. Despite admonitions from Chair of Judges Steve Smith, MW, to “judge quality, not style,” there’s no question that some judging of style did occur. As another judge said to me during a debate over a particular Chardonnay, “That may be a style, but it’s no longer an acceptable style.”
5. Awarding medals based on consensus is apt to produce somewhat different results from how we rate wines at Wine Enthusiast, where each wine is typically reviewed by a single taster. The panel approach seems to reward wines that don’t step out of the box–those that epitomize current fashion rather than those that challenge it. On the other hand, individual reviewers reward or punish those outliers, depending on how those renegade characters align with their own personal taste preferences.
6. Several of the top producers don’t enter their wines, so the field being evaluated doesn’t always include wines that might be top of their field by reputation. While magazines can purchase wines if necessary, that’s not an option for a wine show.

You can see the complete results on the show’s Web site, and you can access my individual reviews of New Zealand wines via our online Buying Guide. I’ll be formally reviewing many of the award-winning wines in the months ahead as the latest releases arrive in the United States.

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