Tag Archives: Texsom International Wine Awards

private label wine

When you know way too much about cheap wine

cheap wineBring on the cheap wine; who else but the WC can identify it blind in a competition?

Is it possible to know too much about cheap wine? That’s what happened to the Wine Curmudgeon during last month’s judging in the TexSom International Wine Awards.

We did a blind tasting of a sauvignon blanc in a category called “Multiple countries, all other white varieties,” which is about as odd and unusual a category as possible. But I thought I knew what the wine was, since it’s my fate to know more about cheap wine than almost anyone else in the world.

“That must be the Yellow Tail sauvignon blanc,” I said. “They blend New Zealand sauvignon blanc with sauvignon blanc from Australia. It wasn’t bad the last time I had it.”

The other three judges, each of whom was incredibly accomplished and who I liked and enjoyed tasting with, looked at me as if I was babbling baby gibberish. And why not? Yellow Tail is probably not something they drink regularly, and there is no reason why they should. And they probably didn’t expect to be judging with someone who could identify cheap wine the same way they can recognize a bottle of high-end cabernet sauvignon from California’s Santa Cruz Mountains (which they did during our judging).

So when the competition results were announced last week, the sauvignon blanc in the “Multiple countries, all other white varieties” category was, in fact, the Yellow Tail (which got a bronze medal). How many people in the world who don’t work for Yellow Tail would have been able to identify the wine just from the category?

I will leave it for you to decide if that’s a good or a bad thing.

TEXSOM International Wine Awards 2017

TEXSOM wine competitionResults

Where but the TEXSOM wine competition could you find jalapeno wine as well as some of the world’s great reds?

This year’s TEXSOM wine competition featured both the sublime and the silly – some incredible California pinot noir as well a cabernet sauvignon that might have been one of the world’s great wines. But we also tasted a jalapeno wine.

Never a dull minute, is there?

It’s no surprise about the first group. TEXSOM is one of the best wine competitions in the U.S., attracting a record 3,500 entries this year and featuring some of the most qualified judges in the world. And that I get to judge, with my cheap wine background, remains both a pleasure and a mystery.

That makes it the kind of competition that attracts the flight of 12 pinot noirs, which were from the highly-regarded Santa Lucia Highlands. Most were not only classic in their elegance, but reminded me how well-made California pinot noir can be when its winemakers want to make pinot noir and not some bastard marketing child.

I probably shouldn’t write too much about the cabernet, since the results haven’t been released yet. It’s enough to know that it was part of a three-wine flight from California’s Santa Cruz Mountains appellation, whose producers include the legendary Ridge and its Monte Bello cabernet, plus the well-respected Mount Eden Winery. We tasted the wines blind, of course, so I don’t know that either of those were part of the flight, but that the wines were from that area should give you an idea about how complex, subtle, and amazing they were.

Unfortunately, not everything else was that much fun. The first day of the two-day event included almost an entire afternoon of grocery store plonk from Washington state, the kind of wine that makes me wonder why any producer would think a consumer would enjoy it. Call those wines the seamy underside of premiumization; I can’t shake the suspicion that too many were entered not because anyone thought they were worthy of a medal, but because they cost $15 or $20 and consumers are buying $15 or $20 wine.

And the jalapeno wine? It was so spicy that it was undrinkable, and this comes from someone who pickles jalapenos every summer because I like jalapenos. There is no doubt a market for this sort of thing, though I can’t imagine what it would be.

More about the TEXSOM International Wine Awards:
• TEXSOM International Wine Awards 2016
• TEXSOM International Wine Awards 2015
• Dallas Morning News TEXSOM Wine Competition 2014

Texsom International Wine Awards 2016

Texsom International Wine AwardsHow much fun is it when one gets to judge regional wine at an important U.S. wine competition, and to do it with people who know just as much about regional wine as the Wine Curmudgeon does?

Lots and lots of fun, which is why I always enjoy judging the Texsom International Wine Awards (formerly The Dallas Morning News Wine Competition). The judges are matched with their specialties, so that I usually get to judge wine from the other 47 states, which I did again this year — Michigan, Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, and Nevada among them.

And, as noted, the other judges are my panel were top-notch — Quebec’s Remy Charest, who knows as much about obscure Canadian grapes as anyone has a right to know; Madeline Triffon, an MS from Michigan; and Colorado’s Wayne Belding, another master sommelier and one of the best friends regional wine has.

More importantly, the quality of the wine continued its improvement. Some of the whites had their problems, but the reds were among the best I’ve judged in years, and we gave gold and silver medals to match. Particularly impressive were a Rhone-style blend from Arizona and a Bordeaux-style blend from Maryland, both golds. We judged the wines blind, so I don’t know what they were, but I’ll update when the results are announced.

The second day of judging wasn’t quite as much fun, when Remy and I did lots and lots of wine from the Lodi region in California. We held up, though, and much thanks to Paul Wagner of Balzac Communications and Ben Roberts, an MS in Houston who works for the distributor RNDC. They kept me on track when I wanted to run screaming from the room in the middle of judging 23 Lodi zinfandels that mostly tasted the same — lots of sweet fruit, little tannins or acidity to balance the fruit, and a mouth feel closer to dessert wine than table wine.

We also judged two rounds of Italian varietals from Amador County, an under-appreciated region in California, and the wines were mainly spot on. A barbera won gold, and I’ll update this as well.