When the blind lead the blind 14 March 2008

What’s to be done when competitions either give ludicrous results or show evidence of manipulation, wonders Tim James

While writing winey stuff for a predominantly horseracing magazine recently and pondering vine-equine connections, two thoughts persisted. Firstly: however much of a gamble it is to buy and open a bottle of wine (and the older the wine the less certain you can be of  precisely what you’ll find), it’s easier to lose a lot of money on horses. Secondly: given the absurdities involved in wine-judging, wouldn’t it be nice for wine competitions to have the equivalent of  a winner being simply the first one past the post?

First down the throat might be an equivalent – it’s well known to insiders that when a panel of wine-judges gets together after some solemn judicial event, polishing off desirable left-overs with dinner, it’s certainly not always the gold-bemedalled bottles that empty fastest. But that practical verdict is little use to the punters, unless the judges admit that the wines they gave most points to are not really the wines that they actually find pleasantest or most interesting to drink.

There remains, for me, the question that all honest winewriters and judges (if such exist) should ask themselves repeatedly: how on earth is the ordinary winedrinker (often lacking confidence in his or her judgement, and, more importantly, not getting the chance to regularly taste and compare a large range) meant to react when confronted by rack upon rack of wines? I don’t know a really good answer, or if there is one, but I’m confident that the dominant sort of stunt – the big blind-judged wine-tasting competition – is not the way to give or get guidance. And yes, I do know that there are also serious problems with judgements made when the taster can see the label.

It seems to me that Wine magazine, whose viability is really predicated on the big blind sort of tasting, is showing some signs of an honest crisis of confidence about the process (and it’s going to be interesting to see what, if anything, happens with a new editor – the old one having just left). The magazine has actually had a pretty bad last year in terms of its judging processes, so some insecurity would be quite in order, and potentially useful.

There was first of all a 2007 Chenin Challenge in which it appeared that the winning wine had scored lower than the second-placed wine (prompting furious, denunciations from Ken Forrester). Long explanations of the complex, multi-stage procedures involved persuaded most of us eventually that it was all sort-of kosher, even if we didn’t quite understand.

More straightforward was the situation in the Port tasting, when one of the judges was the winemaker who had most entries being tasted, and who promptly gave all of his own wines his highest scores, which were not discounted, helping him to win just about everything.

Then complexity started to dominate again in the Diners Club Award tasting (now colonised by Wine mag). The panel chair and the tasting convenor afterwards gave markedly different accounts of how the finalists were decided upon, and attempts to resolve the situation by probing various ambiguous statements from everyone including the auditor fizzled out when the Managing Editor pompously declined ‘to be drawn into any further debate about or explanation of the judging.’ Correspondence on the matter was declared closed.

All this alongside the usual multitude of risibilities, with wines like the widely acclaimed Cape Point Sauvignon Blanc Reserve rating just one star and, in the Shiraz Challenge, a clutch of starry names (The Foundry, De Trafford, Gilga, Columella) rating two.

The latest Chenin Challenge has, it must be said, very plausible winners, and few “big names” relegated to the depths. But before congratulating the judges, let’s see: of  122 entries, 19 ‘seeds’ went straight into the final round. What a relief it must have been for the judges to score the remainder, knowing the biggest names weren’t there. They chose just 15 more for the final round. Imagine if a substantial majority of the quarter-finalists at Wimbledon had not had to compete to get there?  The organisers presumably think this is a good way to get good results, and so it is – but let’s not claim it as a blind tasting!

In weaker moments I feel a little sympathy for Wine magazine – either the results of their tastings are fairly ludicrous, or some deft manipulation is discernible. They can’t win. But in fact they do – strangely, enough people seem to regard the results as significant enough to keep the magazine creak along. They’re the ones gaining little.

• This article first appeared in Noseweek, 'South Africa's unique investigative magazine'