Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show 2009: Benchmarking

BENCHMARKING

Blind or sighted? This is the never-ending debate around wine assessments. For those who doubt the independence, integrity or impartiality of the judges, only the most camouflaged and clandestine arrangements make any sense. For those who recognise that pedigree and provenance - the vinous equivalents of DNA - play a vital role, the unsighted route is flawed because it cannot take cognisance of this kind of information without some form of material disclosure.

 

Much of this wouldn't matter if it wasn't that a great deal flows from the outcome. Critics like America's Robert Parker and the UK's Jancis Robinson can influence the reputation of a vintage or the commercial prospects of a producer. Tasting panels and wine shows can bring palpable benefits to those who do well - though they are also less likely to undermine an established player if a submission fails to perform. The world of wine is in a state of perennial oversupply, and competition for listings, shelf facings and that great intangible "share of the consumer's mind" is more aggressive than ever. Is it any surprise that objective (or at least externally obtained) evidence of product quality delivers meaningful benefits to producers?

Of course, most players have a preference for the environment in which they are to be judged. Those with long-established reputations - and who, coincidentally, would have most to lose from a poor performance in a blind tasting - tend to opt for sighted assessments. Their reasons are often more complex than simply playing their strengths. To the extent that their fruit comes from sites with a marked sense of origin (and may be slower-evolving than more commercially produced multi-regional blends), the virtues inherent in their wines are not immediately evident. Of course, years of marketing investment as well as their intangible (but no less real) brand value are also considerations.

For those still building a reputation, or established producers confident that their wines embody qualities which can be discerned by astute judges, wine shows offer the perfect opportunity to stake a claim - or maintain a position - in this highly competitive industry. Still, serious players are unlikely to risk submitting to a blind tasting unless they are confident that the palates of those passing judgment on their wines are equal to the task, and that the competition is managed in a suitably rigorous way.

The Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show has, since its inception in 2002, attracted the best and most reputable tasters - international and local - and applied a judging methodology which has earned for it the reputation of being the toughest major wine competition in the world. The process that is applied includes several safety nets, one of which is that any wine may be championed by a single member and may therefore be called back for a second, inevitably more arduous look. Even the associate judges (show-palates-in-training working with the senior judges) can draw the panel's attention to a wine whose qualities the other members may have missed in their assessment of the line-up, and if the panel cannot reach agreement on the awarding of a medal it is obliged to call upon the Show Chairman to resolve the issue.

A potentially undemocratic dictatorship by a minority is not the way that the Show should function - but it does ensure that each and every member of the panel carries personal responsibility for the decisions taken in concert. This said, the criteria themselves are by no means absolute: the chairman of the judges obviously directs the panels in terms of the overall aesthetic that the Show tries to reward. However, in the end most of these features can only be assessed subjectively. When is a wine underripe, just ripe enough, or overripe? When do the tannins add weight and richness to the palate, when are they just too chunky? When is elegance simply austerity, when does sumptuousness become baroque opulence? The way the panels themselves are balanced, the dynamic of the day, even the mood of the moment, all play a role.

The Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show has distinguished itself over the years not only for the rigour of its process but also by the consistency of the different judging panels in narrowing their focus to a fairly constant group of top performing producers. In wine judging circles, its tough stance on the allocation of medals is unique. Whereas most competitions are somewhat liberal, the Trophy Wine Show sets a bronze medal threshold which acknowledges the result as a significant achievement, not a lollipop handed out to whoever has taken the trouble to enter.

With fewer than 40% of the entries garnering any medal - and gold medals almost always under 2% - the Trophy Wine Show really does separate the best wines of the industry from the others (many of which are still competently-made, good drinking beverages). Judges are briefed with clear divisions in mind. Wine can be perfectly good and yet not pick up a medal (these are the ‘good commercial wines' that make up the bulk of the submissions). To justify a bronze, it must satisfy the criterion of being ‘good to very good, of fine character'. The step-up to silver separates bronze medallists from wines which are ‘excellent and of distinction'. Gold medallists - and therefore trophy contenders - must be 'superlative, world-class.'

Ultimately, this all comes down to benchmarking. Without quantification - whatever the limitations of a scoring system when it comes to aesthetic judgement - how can the wine industry as a whole acquire a sense of direction (which individual players are obviously free to rebel against, or accept)? The Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show has become the most widely accepted measure of achievement among the country's top producers, serving to lead and to inspire rather than to criticise or to diminish. Rigour is an inescapable feature of this process, just as parsimony is the inevitable consequence when it comes to the medal count.

In the eight years since its inception, the Show has made a meaningful contribution to the ceaseless debate about quality and style. It has helped to bring some sense of order to the burgeoning number of new wines coming to the market. And finally, it has played a key role for wine enthusiasts seeking to reach the undiscovered vinous treasures of the country before they become impossibly hard to find.

Michael Fridjhon