Shiraz and other absurd challenges 7 September 2007

A sceptical Tim James wonders in a recent Noseweek article about the
value of big wine competitions

A well-known notion has it that a monkey banging away at a typewriter would or could eventually produce Hamlet. Whether this is a parable, the mathematics of chance, or simply nonsense, is unclear. Better, anyway, to give the monkey a rest from the keyboard and persuade it to arrange the Cape’s hundreds of shiraz wines in ranking order – the outcome should be just about as plausible as the results of Wine magazine’s elaborate annual exercise called the Shiraz Challenge.

A comparison of the two selection processes could even make for good television, it occurs to me – on a split screen, with some twit as host and experts to comment. We might focus, for example, on what happens to Boekenhoutskloof Syrah (generally recognised as one of the best)…. The monkey plonks it down somewhere in the middle of the line-up, but the panel (with canned applause for their acumen) puts it amongst the top ten. Who remembers that the monkey has only done what the illustrious panel did last year?

And look (talking of our recognised best wines), the sagacious beast has placed both Sadie Family Columella and The Foundry Syrah near the top, while the master palates award them the merest of two stars, along with other fancy names that you’d expect to see among the leaders: De Trafford, Gilga, Fairview Jakkalsfontein….

The monkey’s supporters groan, though, as it puts Savanha (a pleasant enough, cheap wine whose mother, even, would not highly rate its chances of exaltation) amongst the grand four-star winners (‘a wine of distinction’). But then – the illustrious panel does the same!

Et cetera. Forget about the monkey. Simply, there are plausible, less plausible and many downright implausible results in the Shiraz Challenge, which means the total must be implausibility. Obviously, we can expect no consistency over the years, though vintage variation is unlikely to be great. Last year’s winner, Saxenburg 2003, got a mere three stars this year (for the 04 vintage), which is certainly better than the two stars achieved last year by this year’s top-scorer, Bon Courage Inkarà.

For some wines there are, admittedly, no track records against which we can consider their competition performances. And organisers and judges will, anyway, point out that it is one job of competitions to challenge established opinons. It is certainly useful to be alerted to new stars and to unjustifiably inflated reputions – but for this to be done reliably, there must be a discernable basis for faith in the judgement.

Much the same goes for other big-category competitions where genuinely competent judges are expected to taste and rate a few hundred wines. Quite apart from the ludicrousness of this to anyone who knows how a wine can change in the glass, there is in the case of red wines for example, a continual accretion of tannin in the mouth, making it something more than difficult to judge balance in any reliable way by the time you get to wine number 50, let alone stumble tiredly towards number 100 and beyond.

In the case of the Shiraz Challenge, 189 wines were judged over three rounds, each one narrowing the range. But seeing that the first round (using two teams)  eliminated some of the country’s top wines, and the second round pushed some very modest ones into the final, it is hard to see much advantage here.

Competition methodology is relevant, though. It’s become clear from observing the meticulous, intelligent way things are organised and led by Michael Fridjhon at the Trophy WIne Show (he also chairs the Shiraz Challenge) that conditions there are as good as it gets – except for the crucial fact that the judges must cope with far too many wines. The results are still not credible to any useful degree – even if they would take a few monkeys a while to match.

With so much choice in wine, it’s understandable that people want guidance. That’s why wine magazines prioritise rankings and ratings, why entrepreneurs can make big money out of wine competitions, why confused winedrinkers go for gold stickers – probably less in confidence that this guarantees quality than in the emotional security that at least it is not their own possibly mistaken choice, but one endorsed by experts.