What do wine shows mean? What goes on behind all those white-coated judges we’ve seen recently on TV news – in September’s Canberra Regional Show, October’s International Riesling Challenge and this month’s National Wine Show of Australia?

Who are the judges? What attracts them to serve without pay, not just in our three high-profile local events, but also in the dozens of Aussie and international wine shows, challenges and awards conducted every year?

Can we rely on their judgement? Are the award-winning wines that we buy exactly the same as those tasted by the judges? And does anyone judge the judges? What’s in a wine show for producers? And what’s in it for drinkers?

The answers we get sometimes depend on whom we ask. The late Len Evans, perhaps the most influential figure in modern Australian show judging, believed that wine shows existed primarily to improve the breed – a view consistent with the origin of our wine shows in agricultural societies.

If we ask producers, we’ll get a mixed response. They’ll say they’re in it for the medals, for benchmarking against other wines – or perhaps a combination of both.  Of course, desiring medals and wanting to promote award winners probably enhances the  ‘improving the breed’ argument.

The important question from a drinker’s perspective is the reliability of show results. Do they make a good shopping guide? My answer, with a few caveats, is that the best Aussie shows are pretty good but, as there are anomalies in any one show’s results, a little scepticism is healthy.

Thankfully, Australia’s shows have been free of major scandal and to my knowledge no one has ever been convicted of outright fraud. But there have been rumours in the past, some from good sources, of ‘award winning’ wines being different from the ones tasted by judges.

Aware of the potential damage that such scams might cause, the industry has this decade attempted to boost judging and auditing standards. The move has been driven by a wine show committee established in 2001 by the Australian Society of Viticulture and Oenology.

The committee (chaired by Canberra-based Nick Bulleid MW has made recommendations on audit protocols, the impartiality of judges, trophy judging, wine show standards and how awards should be used. The ASVO also maintains a register of judges giving details of their credentials. This is now a crucial tool for wine show organisers. See www.asvo.com.au/wineshows for more details.

So, who are the judges? They’re mainly winemakers. But in the past decade we’ve seen increasing numbers drawn from the media and the retailing, wholesaling and wine-waiting trades.

While there’s no formal qualification system for judges, there’s an apprenticeship of sorts. Those aspiring to come on board need considerable tasting experience before becoming ‘associate’ judges – assessing wines alongside judges and being mentored and assessed for their ability. Their scores are not counted. The apprenticeship might last for years or for one or two shows, depending on ability.

Aspiring judges these days increase their chance of success by completing the Australian Wine Research Institute’s four day advanced wine assessment course. And their chances rise again if they can win one of the 12 places on offer for the annual Len Evans Tutorial (see www.lenevanstutorial.com.au for details).

Len established the tutorial to give judges and aspiring judges an international perspective and an appreciation of the world’s great wines. Len died two years ago, but the tutorial lives on, guided by his closest disciples. And the ‘scholars’ from past tutorials are now key judges in the major shows.

While the tutorial is clearly a force for good in the show system, it’s not, on its own, going to perfect show judging standards. Perhaps its biggest contribution comes from preaching a global perspective, as Len did. More on wine shows, and the results of the National, next week.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2008

Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shed light on our wine-drinking habits and on our performance as a wine-exporting nation. And they make us think beyond the averages, reminding us, as W.I.E. Gates noted, of the man ‘who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of six inches’.

We know, for example, that we drink about 480 million litres of wine annually, averaging well over 20 litres per capita. But the stats don’t show the spread of consumption through the population. We can only guess, therefore, at where the metaphorical wine stream flows deepest (some people consume 140 to 280 litres a year – half to one bottle a day) or where it flows not at all. As Len Evans once quipped, when he commenced writing about wine in the sixties, Australians drank only a few litres a head – leading him to the conclusion that statistically he’d been consuming the equivalent of a small village at the time.

In another sense, there’s an extraordinary precision in the ABS figures. I’m thirsty even thinking of the 479,732 million litres that we enjoyed in 2007–08. Most of that – 426,421 million litres – came from Aussie makers. But spurred no doubt by the then strong dollar, imports hit a record 11 per cent of the total at 53,311 million litres.

Even with the favourable exchange rate, though, we can see that some exporting countries fared better than our exporters did in their terms of trade. And behind those favourable terms of trade lies the benefits of regional specialisation.

This is well illustrated in the figures from France and New Zealand. In the year to June 2008, we imported a bit over seven million litres of French wine worth $142.9million. That’s equivalent, by my calculation, to $20.16 a litre – and that’s before the addition of wholesale and retail margins. While we don’t have a breakdown of French wines by style, we do know that imports of sparkling wine from all countries averaged $16 a litre. Presumably much of this is France’s great regional specialty Champagne.

The value of French imports is undoubtedly boosted, too, by other high-priced regional classics from Burgundy, Bordeaux and the Rhône Valley.

By far our largest volume of imports in the year, though, were from New Zealand – 23.9million litres worth $209.4million. The average price of $8.77 a litre is more than double the $4.18 per-litre value of our exports to them. With that sort of advantage, they don’t need to win the rugby. Give or take a little high-priced pinot noir, the Kiwi charge was led by sauvignon blanc from Marlborough. This has gone from zero a generation ago (the first vines were planted there in1973) to being one of the world’s great wine specialties.

Indeed, our average price of $3.75 per exported table wine litre compares poorly against Italian and Spanish imports averaging $5.69 and $6.23 per litre respectively. South Africa, though, seems to be our new source of cheap wine with an average price of just $2.19 a litre.

As a nation we prefer local white wine (203.9 million litres) to local reds and rosés (150.2 million litres). But red and rosé drinkers appear to be somewhat fussier than white drinkers. In 2007–08 Chateau Cardboard accounted for 37 per cent of red and rosé sales compared to 54 per cent for whites.

If that’s all a little too dry, I’ll leave you with one more thought, attributed to Mrs Robert A. Taft, ‘I always find that statistics are hard to swallow and impossible to digest. The only one I can remember is that if all the people who go to sleep in church were laid end to end they would be a lot more comfortable’.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2008