The Auswine Forum

SONOMA COUNTY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 11, 2004--The 2004 California-Australia Wine Shootout results can be viewed at www.AffairsoftheVine.com. Over 250 wines were critically reviewed. A panel of 14 wine professionals tasted the venerable California and Australian wines. Affairs of the Vine and Wine Works orchestrated this comparative judging.

California took top honors in six of the eleven categories and Australia in five. Australia prevailed in the Chardonnay, Merlot, Syrah/Shiraz, Other Reds, and Dessert categories. California won top honors in Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Red Blends, Sauvignon Blanc, Sparkling Wines, and Other Whites.

Australia was the big winner in the Bang for Your Buck Wines - (72 wines selling for under $15) - the top 3 are Australian!


All results can be found here.

Mike

Cripes - these ratings are all over the place. HP Leston and Scotsdale 01 Cabs rating under 80. Top rating Australian Cabernet Yellowtail, with the 99 Odyssey a fair way behind. How do they do these tastings - grab a few monkeys off the street, give them something to drink and see what they type?

Kieran

Mike,

Did you look at the full results. Jim Barry Lodge Hill Shiraz came in last in the Shiraz tasting , narrowly beaten by 2001 Howard Park Scotsdale Shiraz. The Scotsdale Cabernet was last in the Cabernet tasting.

Too much tannin and acid (not enough sugar!).

Just had a look at the Red Blends section. DeBortoli Willowglen was best Aussie red blend. This was (unfortunately) served at my brother's wedding on the Gold Coast a couple of month's ago. Close to the worst wine I have tasted - way too much sugar. Luckily I was able to get some Mamre Brook Shiraz from the bottle shop downstairs to sneak in.

Kicking myself now. Should have bought the 2003 Bin 50 instead.

Cheers

Scott

scottv wrote:Mike,

Did you look at the full results. Jim Barry Lodge Hill Shiraz came in last in the Shiraz tasting , narrowly beaten by 2001 Howard Park Scotsdale Shiraz. The Scotsdale Cabernet was last in the Cabernet tasting.

Too much tannin and acid (not enough sugar!).

2003 Bin 50 the best Shiraz. Must rush out and get me a pallet.

Cheers

Scott

Scott:

Not only do I know this but I know one of the panel!!! He will visiting me early next year. Guess what wine he is going to be served? Blind, of course!

Mike

PS. I'm tempted to put the Lodge Hill into a Yellow Tail Shiraz bottle - just so it will get a good review!!

scottv wrote:Mike,
Too much tannin and acid (not enough sugar!).

KMP,
Cannot fathom the purpose of such a tasting. Assorted group of wines plucked out of the blue and pitched against each other. Difficult to reconcile with the judges opinions too.

sanjay

I have a bit of trouble with this entire tasting..............basically I wouldn't care to drink a single one of these wines.
However, I'll drink some downright boring wines given bad circumstances and need - ie. Yellow Label (BTW it didn't kill me).
I too fail to see who would care about the results though.....

But stay tuned for the REAL Australia/California shoot-out in December in Vancouver with Ginger and Dig - Noons Eclipse and Greenock go head to head with Harlan.
Will we be able to discern who's - who ?
Will someone slip in a Pavie '00 ringer ?
Who will we be completely duped ?
Inquiry minds want to know......
Stay tuned after the 8th of December for the brown bag 'Yanks vs Oz 'event of the year !
Cheers,
Mishy

There were a few wines there that are seriously worth drinking. They can be mostly identified by their low marks.

Madfish Shiraz and Shingleback Shiraz are OK.
Katnook Prodigy Shiraz is a bit overpriced at $A80 or so, but it is a good wine.
Howard Park Lestons and Scotsdales (Cab and Shiraz) are great value at around $A30.
Jim Barry Lodge Hill Shiraz 02 won an international award.

Katnook Cabernet is good and the Odyssey is excellent, and cheaper in the US ($US48) than here (about $A80)

Wynns Cabernet is OK, but it slipped from the heights of ten years ago. Vineyard rejuvenation should bring it back online from the 2004.

St Henri would have shown better if they had chosen any other vintage.

Bizarre that Australia won the Merlot and Other Reds sections without having any decent wines entered.

Kieran

sanjay wrote:KMP,
Cannot fathom the purpose of such a tasting. Assorted group of wines plucked out of the blue and pitched against each other. Difficult to reconcile with the judges opinions too.

sanjay

Sanjay: Think about this, and this is from the AOTV web site. Innovator of Wine Boot Camp®, Affairs of the Vine is the top wine education company in the industry. Experienced educators enthusiastically share their knowledge and love of wine through interactive workshops that are educational, fun, and entertaining. AOTV conducts extensive wine industry training, corporate wine events, and team-building workshops. In 2002, AOTV passionately poured wine for over 100,000 people. Our Web site attracts over 1,000,000 visitors per year.

Impressive huh! You get the feeling that they know what they are doing don't you. Don't you? Looking further. This is from their May 2004 Newsletter. Wines may be submitted to the 2004 California-Australia Shootout beginning on June 1, 2004. The preliminary tastings will begin in mid-July and the finals will be held on August 16, 2004. For information on how to submit wines or serve as a panelist, contact shootout@affairsofthevine.com Certainly allows a big lead up time time for potential entrants to submit!. And you can invite yourself to be a panelist!

I've emailed them to ask how many wines were entered by producers, distributors, or purchased by AOTV.

Mike

KMP wrote:Our Web site attracts over 1,000,000 visitors per year.

How do they know it is 1,000,000? That number is pure hype, there is a big difference between a million visitors and a million different people visiting.

If you have have 20,000 unique people who look at the site once a week, you have a million visitors a year. Hell, I have just checked my site and based on the common way "visitors" are measured, torbwine has had 163,364 in the last 12 months.

As PT Barnum would say, there is one born every minute. These "things" - both the shoot out and the numbers quoted do not have a high level of credibility. All they tell you is a bit about some people taste, or lack of it.

Ric:

I thought you'd be more likely to comment on the "passionately poured" bit!

Mike

KMP wrote:Ric:

I thought you'd be more likely to comment on the "passionately poured" bit!

Mike

Mike,

I miss read it, I thought it read "poured Passiona"

Dear All:

The reason behind putting up this post, without comment, was to see what the response might be to the results. Scott was far too quick off the mark to realize that I might be just a little concerned by a "shootout" that puts the 2002 Jim Barry Lodge Hill in last place in a Syrah/Shiraz lineup; its no secret that I like this wine. What is more interesting however is how this tasting was done. According to the web site:

Our tasting panels are comprised of retail, restaurant and wine trade professionals, wine makers and writers, consumers and Affairs of the Vine staff. We believe our tasting panels are the most diverse and well rounded in the industry.

All wines are tasted blind.

The wines are reviewed in a series of tastings. The judges for the preliminary rounds consist of a core group from the final panel. The preliminary tastings are limited to four or five flights (10 wines per flight) per day. Each wine is judged on its own merit and not judged against other wines in the flight.

If the panel finds that a wine is corked or has other questionable characteristics, that bottle is replaced with a second.

Scores and notes are collated. Once the preliminary tastings are completed, the top scoring wines are chosen for the final round. The 50-60 top scoring wines are reviewed in the final round by a larger panel of experts.

Our panelists rate the wines and are required to take copious notes on their impressions of the wines. These notes and scores are utilized to create the final descriptions and scores that are posted on our website.

IÂ’m never impressed by a competition that has two panels. That may have contributed but that does not completely explain the final results. Remove the use of the two panels and the rest of the approach seems quite reasonable. (Although IÂ’d bet that the notes are chosen to fit the final scores.) That places most of the onus on the tasters. Who are they? From the AOTV site The tasting panels were comprised of a diverse range of wine industry professionals from varying disciplines including restaurant and retail trade, winemakers, wine writers, wine educators, and wine consultants. Sounds OK, not a bunch of monkeys, or even novices. But are they experienced judges, or even experienced tasters? If you Google them you get a pretty varied lot. But IÂ’m not going to denigrate these people because I do know one of them and he does know wine; he makes the stuff, and he makes excellent wine.

This type of tasting panel reminds me of the tasting groups that I attend at various wine shops here in San Diego. They usually consist of a mix of folks of varying experience. Two things have always interested me about this type of mix. First is that the makeup of the group always determines the outcome. And second, even with an experienced group, but especially with an inexperienced group, the wines that are drinking well usually score the best. Wines with the most potential often score mid to low range. The biggest reason for this is that such informal tasting groups do not have a standardized approach to scoring. This is mainly because everyone uses their own method. I use 20 points (and always consider potential), others use 100 points, some use A, B, C, D, others use +, ++, +++, ++++. For the AOTV tasters, it is not really clear how they do their scoring, except that they score out of 100. How do they split their 100 points? Do they leave that to the individual taster?

One clue to their tasting approach is here. In my opinion this type of tasting, while fun for the consumer and useful for a retailer, is pretty much useless as a comparison between two groups. Even if the Experts are well standardized in their judging approach, the general public, which is what the Wine Lovers can be consider to be in this case, are going to be all over the map and to even attempt to gather these results is an endeavor in futility.

Mike