California State Fair Home Winemaker's Competition

I had a great time this last week. I was a volunteer for the California State Fair Home Winemaking Competition. This event and its sister event - the Commercial Winemaking Competition - are one of the largest in the country, the amount of work that goes into setting it up is incredible. I want to write a little on what happens behind the scenes.

Before I even got involved, the Competition rules had been set up, the applications made available to the home winemakers and the sample wines had been coming in over the previous month. Each wine was received, recorded by type, grape, and residual sugar. They were stored in a Woodbridge Winery so California's normal summer heat wouldn't spoil them, and the data about each wine was entered into the competition database. Each wine got a 4 digit number.

Once the deadline for receiving the wines had passed, the wines were grouped by type and then turned into tasting flights - i.e. groups of similar wines that would be tasted together. Here is where the residual sugar came into effect. The flights tried to taste from dry to sweet. A lot of work was done to create flights that would work and give each wine a fair chance.

Each bottle ( actually a set of two, in case one was corked, or additional pours were needed if the wine made it to the finals) got its numbered label, additionally, one of the two bottles got an additional numbered label on a ring over the neck of the bottle. The wines were in numeric order by the order they were received. This order was different from the order they would be tasted, since they could be received in any order and needed to be recorded when they were received, while the tasting order would be by type and flight.

Both bottles of an entry were then boxed together. 6 entries to a case. Each box was then numbered so the wines could be put back into sorted order.

This was all done even before I came into the picture. I started on the Sunday before the event which was going to be on Tuesday. Here was the process.

• We set up both rooms, the "cellar" room and the "judging" room. Tables and chairs were arranged.
• In the cellar room, boxes of wines were taken to the appropriate table and the wines were laid out in sorted (reception) order.
• Once all the wines were lined up, picking sheets were printed. These sheets had 1 to 15 wines on them and each sheet constituted what would be a tasting flight that would be given to the judges.
  
• Wines were picked - 1 bottle from each entry, and were put into empty boxes and then moved to their position on the "flights" table. For example Table "P" had 5 flights of about 10 wines in each flight. Each flight was then numbered : P-1, P-2, P-3, etc. Again each wine in the flight had already been ordered by sweetness.
• By the end of Sunday, 1 bottle of every entry had been picked and boxed and on the appropriate table for the pourers to create their flights.
  
• Each of the pourers' tables - labeled from "A" to "Q" corresponded to one of the judges panels. Each table had 5 flights of wines and each flight had been cross checked at least 2 times for correctness.
  
• In the Cellar - there was still one bottle for every entry, and the celler had been checked to make sure that at least 1 bottle from every entry had made it into a flight.
  

About 768 entries were categorized into about 85 flights so the average was about 9-10 bottles per flight, although some flights were only 1-2 bottles and a couple had 15 bottles.

The Judging was held on the following Tuesday. The judges' tables were also lettered "A" to "Q". Each judge has been asked which wines he was most comfortable judging. The judging panels were grouped by interest, this had also been done in advance.

The Volunteers arrived early on Tuesday and were broken into teams. Each team had a specific role and also specific locations where they were allowed to go and locations from which they were barred. This was to prevent cross contamination of information about the wine from the cellar to the judges.

Here were the teams:

• The Cellar crew. Responsible for replacing corked bottles, pulling wines for finals tasting, and also putting wines together for distributing to the volunteers when the competition was over.
  
• Pourers. They poured each flight, put the glasses on the trays by which they would be delivered to the judges.
• The Stewards. They were not allowed in the pouring area. They could only received the numbered glasses and trays and transport them to the judging room. There they would place the wines in order in front of the judges.
  
• Communications: One communications table in each room managed the order of events. They knew when new flights should be served, which bottles needed repours, and kept everything running in general
• Data crew printed labels, entered scores into the computers, checked the work of the judges and the clerks. They enabled the transition between the 3 phases of the competition.
• Clerks supported the judges, tallied the judges scores, and made sure all the scores were correct and complete (hopefully) before handing them off to the data crew.
  
• Table assistants. They watched each table to see who needed water, or cracker refills. Who needed "bug juice" to clear their palates. They also moved into clear empty glasses and dump buckets between flights.
  
• Administration and team leads. Managed the resources and people and kept everything moving.

There were 3 judges to each of the 17 ( "A" to "Q" ) panels and another 5-7 senior judges who were available to answer questions about potentially obscure grapes, or to confirm a possible fault in a wine.

Even further behind the scenes, the people running the event had to provide food, water, breaks and lunches, for the about 100 volunteers and the about 60 judges.

I am really, really impressed with the people who could pull all of this off. The logistics are incredible. And despite the effort involved, the people who make this work are all really supportive of each other and everybody works together to make this a great event.

I was really honored to work with them and hope / plan to do it again.

john