In no particular order, notes jotted down during the Michigan Wine Competition:

• The industry has every reason to be proud of the folks who run the Competition. This includes Wine Council staff members Linda Jones, David Creighton and Karel Bush, along with Judging Superintendent Chris Cook, the Kellogg Center folks, and numerous volunteers. As someone who's organized a lot of wine tastings, I was impressed how smoothly and efficiently things went off -- it's not easy pouring and distributing something like 2500 tastes of 365 wines to 24 judges, collecting and tabulating the results, and having the printouts ready to distribute just moments after the judging ends.
  
  
• It seemed odd that only 5 of 24 judges were women. Over 50% of MichWine's  registered users are female, if first names are an indication. In an industry that's been historically male-dominated, enough skilled palates are out there to achieve a better balance.
  
  
• My three desert island wines. White: Left Foot Charley Pinot Blanc, Island View Vineyard. Red: Longview Cab Franc Vintner Reserve (but only if I anticipate being stranded on the island for several years). Dessert: Chateau Grand Traverse Riesling Ice Wine.
  
  
• Buying one bottle of each of them will set you back about $140. Ouch! THAT'S certainly a Michigan record...

• Offered without comment: overheard advice on awarding medals by one table's head judge, "If we're going to err, err up."
  
  
• There was a clear desire that we find a Pinot Grigio Gold medal winner. This isn't a service to the industry or its customers. We have no trouble "finding" medalists when the quality is there.
  
  
• Speed tasting of this sort -- 56 wines before Noon -- resembles work more than fun. Though when you're just assessing overall quality and not struggling for the right descriptive words for tasting notes, things move a lot faster.
  
  
• We didn't hand out a Judge's Special Award, which would go to an outstanding wine that didn't get a Best of Class. Reason: to be considered, a wine must receive at least 75% of the votes of the relevant Best of Class winner. Because most classes had runaway winners, no wines qualified for consideration.
  
  
• But if I COULD have picked a Judge's Special Award, it would have gone to Lemon Creek's 2005 Shiraz. Though the varietal isn't going to make great wine every year in Michigan, this version was outstanding. A Double Gold, and worth seeking out.
  

Nine of us, wine geeks all, were splayed around the Sunday brunch table this morning when I mentioned that I was writing about the number of medals being handed out at various wine competitions.

"Remember, they're not supposed to mean anything," said the lawyer in the bunch. "They're just marketing tools for the wineries to sell their wines."

"That's not true," said the wine wholesaler across the table. "When I tell a retailer that a wine won a medal at some competitition, they don't care -- they know that medals don't mean anything. They just want to know the Parker or Spectator scores."

So it's come to this. Everyone involved understands that medals, especially those of the the lesser colors, stand for little and have even less street cred. But everyone's against the prospect of not minting them in droves, lest someone else in the food chain take offense.

When I first wrote about medals a few months back, I pointed to the All Canada Wine Championships as a different model. Judges there don't award medals. They score wines on the 100-point scale. Medals go to a fixed percentage of the highest-scoring wines: the top 10% get Gold, the next 10% Silver, the next 10% Bronze. Result: 30% of their wines get medals, about half of what we give out in Michigan.

Of course, the glaring flaw is that a bad vintage yields the same number of medals as a great one. As I pointed out then, that's not a very useful consumer guide.

So here's a proposal. Let's adopt the All Canada system with a single modification: in addition to the percentage limits, wines also need to achieve a minimum score from the judges in order to receive a medal. Call it 90 points for gold, 86 for silver, 82 for bronze. In a bad year, there may be few 90 point wines -- hence, few gold medals awarded, and under 30% awarded overall. In a great year, more than 30% of the wines might qualify for medals on the basis of raw scores, in which case the medals will represent the best 30% of wines made in that vintage.

Needless to say, there's nothing sacred about giving medals to a maximum of 30% of the wines entered. It could just as easily be 25% or 35%. But it needs to be low enough that even a Bronze medal from a mediocre vintage says out loud: this is a wine that both reaches a certain quality threshhold and is among the top tier of wines produced in this vintage.

In the short run, this may not be the most winery-friendly idea ever proposed, even if it greatly assists consumers in identifying the best wines to put on their tables or in their cellars. But in the long run, it's also a major service to wineries because it restores credibility to the tarnished metals that currently characterize our wine awards.

At last night's Awards Reception for the Michigan Wine Competition, more than one winery owner and winemaker commented to me how "tough" or "stingy" we judges had been giving out medals. One of them said that it was easier to win Gold from a broader competition -- like the Eastern or Great Lakes or Tasters Guild -- than it was in our own state.

Funny, I was thinking just the opposite. Especially after seeing that over 60% (!) of the entries went home with a medal.

My views about this are on the record. But now that I've had a chance to participate in the judging process, I also see the source of the problem.

Let's back up a step. The reason for restraint in awarding medals isn't to damage the wine industry or those in it who are committed to quality. On the contrary, it's so that each medal level can make a credible affirmation about the quality inside the bottle, just as Parker or Spectator scores do for those who follow them.

These comments don't really apply to Gold and Double Gold medals. We handed out 39 of these at the Competition, to about 10% of the wines entered. I've tasted each of the 39 and, with few exceptions, they're extremely worthy wines.

But when it comes to Silver and, especially, Bronze medals -- well, we toss them out pretty indiscriminately. Or, as one long-time judge said to me, "Nobody brags about winning a Bronze medal. They just include them in their total medal count when they write their publicity."

That kind of cynicism, however justified, is unfortunate if you think the medals we award -- and wineries receive -- should mean something. Judges should be in the business of recognizing quality, not merely providing marketing fodder.

The flaw is in the process. As a judge, you're required to speed-taste your way through dozens of wines. Perhaps you take a few quick notes on each. But when you open your mouth to speak, you have just one of four things to say about a wine: Gold, Silver, Bronze, or No Medal.

And three of the four choices result in the wine receiving a medal.

Given this built-in bias, the differentiation process breaks down this way: wines with clear flaws, or those that are simply not very pleasant, get no medal. Palatable wines with no special redeeming qualities get a Bronze. Wines that slightly surpass the norm or stand out in some way receive Silver. Only at the Gold level do serious quality standards seem to kick in.

Frequently during the judging, I found myself scoring one level lower than my three tablemates. My logic was this: wines don't deserve medals simply for showing up and being drinkable. That's expected, not medal-worthy.

But the inevitable result of reserving the non-medal category for flawed and truly indifferent wines is that the merely average DO receive medals -- to the tune of 61% of this year's entries.

In this context, we'd do well to consider the words of Gilbert and Sullivan: "When everybody's somebody, then no one's anybody."

Tomorrow, I'll look at how we might improve the situation.

Best Dry White: 2006 Left Foot Charley Pinot Blanc, "Island View Vineyard"
Best Semi-Dry White: Gills Pier 2006 Riesling
Best Dessert: 2005 Chateau Grand Traverse Riesling Ice Wine
Best Dry Red: 2005 Longview Cabernet Franc Vintner Reserve
Best Semi-Dry/Sweet Red: Leelanau Cellars Great Lakes Red
Best Sparkling Wine: Tabor Hill Grand Mark Brut

I heartily concur with the first four. Each of them received my vote for Best of Class and I'd run, not walk, to land some bottles of the Left Foot Charley, Chateau Grand Traverse, and Longview.

I never got to taste the Great Lakes Red because, under the competition's rules, as the only sweeter red to receive a gold medal at a judging table it automatically became "Best of Class" without a taste-off or vote by the entire group of judges. If you like sweet red wines, give it a try.

Finally, I have some personal reservations about the Tabor Hill Grand Mark sparkling wine. It's very well crafted, but quite heavy on the toast flavors that some folks -- like me -- might not prefer. My vote for top sparkling wine went to the runner-up, Larry Mawby's Cremant, which is a much lighter, fresher bubbly. You pick, based on your style preference.

It's worth reiterating that the judges tasted all of the wines completely blind from pre-poured glasses. Although we made some guesses (including some wrong ones) along the way, we didn't know the identities of any of the wines we tasted or awarded medals until they were announced at the end of the competition.

After tasting about 100 wines today, it's time for a break. Tomorrow we'll post a full article (with pictures) about the results, and I'll add a blog entry with some impressions.

Joel

PS -- There may be a few tickets remaining for Thursday evening's Medal Winner reception at Kellogg Center in East Lansing. Many of the winning winemakers and winery owners will be in attendance, and they'll be pouring the best-of-class wines along with some other gold medal winners, and serving some excellent food accompaniments. Everyone's invited, and it's a steal at the $35 cost of admission. Give them a call at 800.875.5090; you need a reservation to attend.

It's 2 PM, and we're taking an unexpected break for glass-washing. A number of tasters at various tables have complained of fish-like aromas infesting the glasses, which are being rinsed, but not washed, betweeen flights. Tablemate Brian Cain observed that the smell is simply reminiscent of Grand Rapids tap water to him -- but this view didn't prevail, so we're on a half-hour hiatus while all the glasses get re-rinsed.

Before the break, we voted room-wide for the best-of-class dry red. The decisive winner was a 2005 Cab Franc double-gold medalist that came from our table; my guess is that it's the Brys, which I think I recognized from two previous tastings. This is a wine that I've always rated extremely highly but with my fingers lightly crossed -- it's so monstrously tannic and closed right now that one can only hope it eventually comes around to pleasurability after five or so years of cellaring.

It's a dirty job, but...

I'm judging at Table 4, along with wine writer Ray Heald, MSU viticulture professor Paolo Sabbatini, and wholesaler Brian Cain. Our table received some plum tasting assignments this morning: 2006 Pinot Grigio (1 gold medal), Dry Gewurztraminer (2 gold medals) and Cabernet Franc (2 gold medals). Because we taste all the wines blind, we have no idea the identity of the wines we gave medals to.

Afterwards, the entire room retasted and voted for best-of-class among the gold medal winners among the gold medal winners in all the dry white and sparkling wine categories. A 2006 Pinot Blanc won the whites in a walkaway; the strong assumption around the room being that it's Bryan Ulbrich's Left Foot Charley Island View Vineyard. A "traditional" Champagne-style blend took the best-in-class bubbly.

While the quality of the palates at the  table lends itself to mostly-good decision-making, the reality is that this kind of speed-tasting inevitably leads to snap judgments in place of the more reflective consideration that I'm more used to at wine tastings.

 

Tomorrow's task: to judge 365 wines. With six tables of four judges apiece, that's an average of 61 wines each judge gets to taste.

But tonight was dedicated to socializing, as early-arriving judges gathered at the State Room in MSU's Kellogg Center for dinner, accompanied by a sampling of Michigan wines. "Wow!" was the collective reaction to 2006 Rieslings from Black Star Farms and, especially, Left Foot Charley, thoughtfully provided as aperitifs by judges Ray and Eleanor Heald. The 2002 Shou from Wyncroft was a red standout, while a nicely-aged 1999 Merlot by Cherry Creek elicited a number of positive comments. (Photo: Journalist and Supreme Court wine-shipping winner Eleanor Heald stares deeply into a glass of Riesling.)

 

 

 

So what do wine judges talk about when they're not judging? Wine, of course. California Riesling master Scott Harvey, just back from a visit to northern Michigan wine country, let it be known that he's arranged with Michigan's Shawn Walters for them to jointly craft a Michigan Riesling this fall at Leelanau's brand new Forty-Five North Winery, where Walters is winemaker. Harvey will release the wine at his Napa winery -- hopefully leaving behind at least a few bottles for us! (Photo: Harvey and Detroit News wine writer Sandra Silfven discuss his Michigan Riesling project.)

 

 

 

Disappointing news department: At the last minute, Master Sommelier Madeline Triffon had to beg off from the judging, due to restaurant scheduling problems. Ditto for southern Indiana winemaker Ted Huber. But he had a more unusual reason: the summer has been so hot in his region that they're starting to pick grapes tomorrow! Fortunately, replacement judges are en route, including Kristin Jonna, owner of the Vinology and Vinotecca wine bars and member of the Detroit-area's Jonna wine dynasty. (Photo: David Ethridge, head of the Lapeer Taster's Guild, and Judging Superintendent Christopher Cook)

I'm headed to MSU's Kellogg Center in East Lansing this afternoon, a newbie judge at the 2007 Michigan Wine & Spirits Competition.

 

According to the press materials, we judges are a mongrel assemblage of 24 "experts" who range from Doug Frost, the only Master of Wine AND Master Sommelier in the US, to Scott Harvey, Riesling guru and California winemaker extraordinaire. Included in the mix are members of the press, wholesale, retail and restaurant trades, consumer tasting groups, and all three Michigan-resident Master Sommeliers.

 

Why so many judges? That's based on the logistics of the competition. Four judges work together as a crew at each table, jointly tasting and judging the entries in specific categories. With six tables

of judges and perhaps 350 wines entered, that gives each of us close to 60 wines to evaluate. And while Robert Parker is reputed to taste through as many as 200 wines in a day (!), my palate fatigue can set in after as few as a couple of dozen -- particularly if they're big reds or sweet dessert wines.

 

 

Out of this comes the medal parade -- double gold (unanimous gold medal award by all judges), gold, silver and bronze. Then we pick the best in each category, and overall best in the competition.

 

This evening, judges and competition organizers get together for dinner; I'll write more after. We begin to taste on Tuesday morning at 9 AM.

It's not by design, but a common theme runs through several recent MichWine articles: for the first time, experienced Michigan winemakers who've worked for others are striking out on their own (or, given financial reality, with the backing of partners) to start new wineries.

This "new wave" consists of folks like Bryan Ulbrich (Left Foot Charley) and Cornel Olivier (Two Lads) in the north, Mike de Schaaf (Hickory Creek) and Matt Moersch (Free Run) in the south. They've all made wine elsewhere, and each now has an ownership stake in his own winery.

Previously, most Michigan wineries seemed to arrive in two ways, not mutually exclusive: (1) People with a passionate desire to make wine, whether or not their dreams were well-grounded in theirskills and experience; (2) Well-to-do individuals or groups of investors for whom owning a winery was a second or third business -- part investment, part trophy, part country retreat.

To these, we can now add a third model: the experienced winemaker as winery entrepreneur.

Why is this worth talking about? Because it reflects the new reality in Michigan's wine industry: wineries with a quality product backed by a strong business plan stand an excellent chance to reap sizable financial rewards -- and critical recognition -- in Michigan's emerging wine boom over the next decade or two.

These new winemakers / winery owners are closer to the ground than any of their predecessors, and one has to assume that they see this most clearly. Their experience means that they approach the wine business with few romantic illusions -- just the need to make a profit to stay in business. That's a powerful motivator.

And here's the question their actions are answering: would you have taken advantage of the chance to buy some land for a winery in Napa Valley in 1970?

The other day, Claudia Tyagi and I drove west to Buchanan, in the Lake Michigan Shore district, to spend a good chunk of a day visiting and tasting with Jim and Rae Lee Lester at Wyncroft, highlighted by a five-year vertical of their flagship Bordeaux-blend, Shou (pronounced "show".) The two most recent samples -- 2005 and 2006 -- came from barrel, though Jim's about to bottle the '05.

I'm hopeless at evaluating very young reds like the seemingly-delightful but lighter '06. The '99 is evolving into a wonderful mature claret. But it was the '05 that really stole the -- ah -- show. It's clearly the best vintage yet of this wine -- oppulently rich and nicely wooded, with the kind of underlying natural acid backbone that most California Meritage can only dream about. At $45 a bottle, sold only by the case and only from the winery, it's also Michigan's most expensive non-icewine -- but would easily hold its own in a tasting of similarly-styled and priced wines from anywhere in the world. If you're on the fence about buying some, I'd place an order before writer David Schildknecht (from Robert Parker's Wine Advocate) comes knocking at Wyncroft later in the summer.

But that's not what I wanted to write about. The Lesters said that Claudia and I had to visit the new (open since last August) Hickory Creek Winery nearby -- and punctuated their suggestion by joining us for the drive over. Winemaker and grapegrower Mike de Schaaf, who cut his teeth at Round Barn, welcomed the four of us with a tasting through his current releases (all 2005 vintage) and a few barrel samples from 2006.

In short: Mike's a kick-butt winemaker. Although he starts with higher percentages of younger-vine and purchased fruit that don't reach Wyncroft-like levels of concentration and finesse, every one of his efforts displays a ringingly pure varietal clarity and spot-on balance. My favorites were the Estate Riesling and "Melange" Bordeaux-blend which, unlike the Shou, is based around Cabernet Franc rather than Cabernet Sauvignon. And his only-slightly off-dry Apple wine -- from multiple heirloom apple varieties -- would make a delightful aperitif or dessert pour.

Now that Hickory Creek is on my radar, I'll be checking back with Mike periodically. He's definitely a winemaker to watch in years to come.