by Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of Wines (Seven Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars, Red Côte)

I did something highly unusual for me last week, I judged at a wine tasting. It was a tasting of rosé organized on my friend, Bob Ecker, which took place at the Meritage Resort in Napa. I, along with four others, tasted through roughly 90 wines, trying to figure out which were the best, and which were not.

It would be very easy to accuse me of the rankest hypocrisy for participating in this event. My views on wine tasting are pretty well known. Basically, I think it is largely a waste of time, highly inaccurate, with results that are not repeatable. So how do I respond to this accusation? Guilty as charged.

But with extenuating circumstances.  I guess the biggest extenuating circumstances  is that it was a lot of fun, and certainly having fun is a pretty good excuse for pretty much anything. The second extenuating circumstance is that, whether these results have any remote accuracy at all, they could help someone sell some wine. And anything that helps to sell wine is worth something in my book.

Having taken part in a number of tastings over my wine life, I would have to say that the judging in this one was more consistent than in pretty much any other tasting I’ve been party to. I always felt that the thing that can be judged with any degree of accuracy are the objective factors. For example, for a red wine, lack of flaws, color, tannin level, acidity, and other factors which you can learn in large (though not total) measure from laboratory analysis.

But what about flavor? Well, I think that’s where judging is at its weakest, not because individual tasters are incapable of evaluating flavor, but because each judge has his own sensitivities, as well as flavors that he likes and dislikes, which can be entirely different from those of the judge sitting next to him.

And I think it was thus with our judging. The ones that got no award, very often earned a no award across the board from every judge. It certainly was rare to see a bunch of no awards along with a gold. In fact, I don’t think it happened even once. I think that the no award category was largely the abode of flawed wines. I know personally I would pretty much give a bronze to any wine for showing up without a serious flaw.

Once the wine got past this low hurdle, opinions differed more widely. It was not unusual to see bronzes and golds for the same wine. However even here, I think there was a level of consistency that is usually lacking in most tastings.

Another facet of the tasting was interesting.  It was split into two categories, dry and sweet.  It was up the entrant to determine which category his wine fell into.  Essentially, 80 submitted as dry and 10 as sweet.  I think this reflects more where the winemakers think the market is than where the wine’s really were.  Many of the “dry” entrants had noticeable, if not elevated, residual sugar.  And one of the “sweet” wines tasted pretty dry to me.

It was also very interesting to know the correlation (or lack there of) between price and quality (assuming that our awards were the gold standard of quality, a dubious assumption). If you took the average price of each award category (no award, bronze, silver, gold), there really wasn’t that much of a difference. In fact, the gold average was slightly cheaper than the no awards. Which adds another nail in the coffin of the argument that you get what you pay for when it comes to wine.

Another thing that stood out fairly well from the tasting was that I, and at least one other of the tasters whose scores I took particular note of, have a particular wine profile that they preferred. I think for me I can pretty much guarantee a silver to any wine that was not low acid, flawed in some serious way, overly sweet, or lacked a tannic, harsh finish.  I think that’s a pretty good description of what a rose should be, but obviously other people would disagree. My love of acidity, for example, is not shared by all people. Certainly, if you look at what has to be considered the most successful blush wine around, White Zinfandel, it would be hard to argue that hyperacidity is a favored attribute in the marketplace.  In fact, if you take an objective view of the marketplace, you’d have to say that cloying, insipid, and tasteless are the descriptors that correlate best with megasales.  So what do I know?

As far as I can tell from doing a quick Google search, Bob has not yet posted the results, but I expect that he will shortly. I’ll put a link in next week’s Good Reads Wednesday for those who would like to check them out.

For those of you who live in the San Francisco area, the Meritage will be having a tasting of the winners on June 8.  Anyone with an interest in Rosé should try to attend.

So I would certainly do this again, if I ever get invited (and in light of views expressed herein, that may be a long shot). But it was a lot of fun, and to the extent that anybody is able to sell some more wine as result of the tasting, more power to them. As I say, anything that helps sell wine is okay by me.

by Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of Wines (Seven Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars, Red Côte)

Went over to some friends’ house for a small get together yesterday afternoon. The excuse for the event was the Regatta on the Bay, which we were able to see upfront, close and personal. The sailboats on the bright and sunny day were beautiful, but the wine, at least to my mind, was even more interesting. In a world dominated by Cabernet and Chardonnay, the selections on offer yesterday were, if not exactly highly unusual, at least not the same old same old.

First in the lineup was a Vouvray. I’ve always loved these wines, which are based on the Chenin grape. This variety gets no respect in this country, for reasons that make no sense at all. True, it was totally lacking in butter, softness, and oak. I can hardly think of a better recommendation for white wine. The fruit was upfront and delicious. The acidity was more than adequate to make this a very well-balanced wine.

From there I moved onto a Bandol rose. I have to admit that I’ve tasted Bandols on only a few occasions in my lifetime, and it’s never been my cup of tea. Ditto for yesterday. There was a slight harshness to it, perhaps even a bit of tannin. At any rate, it just wasn’t anything I found very pleasant.  The label didn’t say anything about which grapes were used, but Mourvedre is required to be at least 50% of the blend.

I have to admit that I find my rose best when it has just a bit of sweetness. This rose was dry, so, I missed out there as well.  It just wasn’t up my alley.

But Bandol is considered the crème de la crème of rose, so I have to think that there are lots of people who like the style. The fact that I’m not one of them means nothing more than, well, I’m not one of them.

At any rate, if you are not enjoying what you are drinking, down the drain. So that was this glass’s ignominious end, at least as far as I was concerned.

Even though it was a warm spring afternoon, exactly what you would expect for a white wine gathering, as is my usual, I quickly moved onto the reds.

By coincidence, I guess, both were from Gigondas and both 2009’s. The first was absolutely knock your socks off delicious. Lots of lush fruit, strawberries and cherries.

The second, however, seemed to have none of the positives of the first, being a bit lean and even a little harsh.  I can’t say as it was totally lacking in fruit, but it wasn’t exactly well endowed either.

So I spent an entire afternoon enjoying a variety of wines and nary a drop of Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay passed my lips.  I don’t intend to diss those grapes, as they are both capable of making outstanding wines.  But it’s nice to have a little variety in life, and the wines I enjoyed yesterday were every bit as good as your typical Cab or Chard.  I would love to have more wine days like that.