The first time I heard that a California winery was hosting a wine-tasting competition, I cringed. Hasn’t wine got enough of a bad rap for elitism? Do we really need to make a public competition out of swirling, sniffing, and spitting? That was a long time ago. The event in question, The California Wine Tasting Championships held at Greenwood Ridge Vineyard turns 25 this year, so clearly there are plenty of people who disagree with my original reaction. Not only that, it turns out that I know some of the people who have won the competition in one category or another. They are all perfectly nice people with families, hobbies, and other interests outside wine. Not one-dimensional wine geeks. [For details on attending this year’s event, click here.]

So I invited some of them to dinner. I planned to challenge them with this incisive, probing question: Why would anyone want to spend a warm summer weekend in a beautiful place near the ocean, sipping wine, eating barbeque, listening to music, and soaking up the sun?

Ummm, let me rephrase the question.

Why would anyone want to enjoy all those good things – while competing against others in the ability to identify what kind of wine is in the glass?

That, essentially, is what the competition is all about: naming the grape varieties in a group of eight wines, from a list of known candidates. In other words, a white wine is going to be either Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer, Muscat, Pinot Gris/Grigio, Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc. If you drink any of these on a regular basis, it’s not that hard to recognize them in the glass. Chances are good that you can guess the rest by a process of elimination.

The folks who guess the most wines in the first round go on to a championship round, in which they can get extra points for also identifying the region a wine came from, the year it was grown, and the winery that made it. You can compete as a novice, amateur, or professional. The champions and other top finishers in the amateur and pro categories then square off in a final battle for an “individual grand champion” title. All this was dreamed up by Allan Green, proprietor of Greenwood Ridge Vineyards in Anderson Valley.

I set up my dinner of champions at Albion River Inn on the Mendocino Coast, which for my money is one of the best restaurant experiences in the wine country. Not only are the food and wine exceptional, but there’s that view of crashing waves, crumbling bluffs, wheeling gulls, and, depending on the day, either a dramatic sunset or cool wet embrace of sea-scented fog. It was a convenient spot for our dinner because two of my guests, Mark Bowery and Sarah Hassell, work there as sommeliers. The two of them teamed up to win the professional doubles competition last summer.

I also invited Peter Marks, M.W., and Tom Elliot. Marks won the professional singles and individual grand champion titles in 1992. Today he directs the food and wine program at Copia in Napa. Tom Elliot owns Northwest Wines, Ltd., a San Francisco-based distributor specializing in the wines of Oregon, Washington and Germany. He won the pro category three out of four years in the late 1980s.

“Allan [Green] half-jokingly told me I had to stop coming,” Elliot remembered as we sipped some sparkling wine before dinner. “He just wanted you to give the rest of us a chance,” Marks laughed. In fact, Marks and Elliot tied for first in the pro singles category in 1989, after which Elliot did stop competing for a while.

After my guests reminisced about their many connections through past jobs in the wine business, we sat down and I posed my question. To my surprise, the first answers were all about the event rather than the competition aspect. “Allan runs it flawlessly,” Elliot remarked. “It’s really a big party with some wine tasting as the organizing principle,” Bowery said. “The time flies by, whether you’re winning or losing.” Hassell pointed out that there were so many other diversions that it didn’t matter if entrants flamed out in the first round: “you can still hang around and have a blast.”

But why, I wondered, did they go in the first place?

What It Takes To Be a Wine Champion

Turns out my tablemates all have two things in common: a desire to test their own wine knowledge, and a competitive streak that likes a victory now and then.

While we talked, we indulged that first predilection by tasting various wines we had each brought in a paper bag. Almost without a word, the four champions fell into the format they knew from the Wine Tasting Championships: going around the table with their guesses about the variety, then the vintage, and then the producer. All the wines came from Mendocino County, so the regional discussion focused on sub-appellations and even specific vineyards.

After the first two wines, I was too busy noting how uncannily accurate the other four tasters were to offer my own guesses. A mystery white was probably Chardonnay, they agreed, but not from a cool coastal area or flat inland valley. That left high-elevation inland vineyards – and in fact the wine was a Chardonnay from Alder Springs Vineyard (peak elevation: 2700 feet). After everyone agreed that one mystery red was an Anderson Valley Pinot Noir from 2004, Marks and Hassell sussed out that the fruit was grown toward the coastal end of the valley, but not at high elevation. (Bingo: the wine was Roederer Estate’s 2004 Pinot.)

When our main courses arrived, the champs relaxed and began to open up about the competition itself. “Once you’ve trained your palate to identify grapes, vintages and producers, you need to keep it in shape,” Marks said. “Going to the Greenwood Ridge competition is another way to calibrate.” Elliot concurred. “In choosing what wine my business is going to sell, I look for regional typicity and varietal accuracy. If you’re a wine drinker who cares about those things, too, then the Wine Tasting Championships should be right up your alley.”

Hassell admitted with a laugh that she loved to compete – “cards, games, sports, you name it” – then pointed out that she needed confidence to do her job as a woman in a man’s game. “I’m selling wine all week to people who are older and have more experience than me,” she said. “The one thing that offsets those factors is confidence, and going up against other good palates is a great way to get that confidence.”

Bowery insisted that he competed in 2006 only because Hassell twisted his arm, but the record shows that he had already won two individual titles in 1996 and 2000. “I can’t remember now why I did that,” he said with a straight face. “Normally I don’t look for opportunities to get humiliated in public.”

When I pressed him, however, he said that the possibility of humiliation existed only in his imagination. “Remember,” he said, “Allan Green picks all the wines for all the flights, and all he cares about is everyone having a good time. So if you nail a wine, you’re a hero. If you blow it, you can always say it’s because Allan put in some weird wine.”

Going to the California Wine Tasting Championships? Plan Now.

This year’s event will be one of the wildest ever, because founder, host and master of ceremonies Allan Green is adding two new categories of competition: one for past champions, and a grand championship for high scorers in the doubles competitions. That means there will be more prizes to win and more exciting head-to-head battles to watch all through the weekend of July 28-29.

In another tip of the hat to the event’s 25-year history, Green has invited back singer-songwriter Keeter Stuart to provide the live music. Other popular attractions, including the chocolate tasting and cheese tasting, will also be back.

All this makes it important to plan ahead for a place to stay in the area. Anderson Valley is a logical choice because it is both nearby and full of wineries to visit – but the valley has no large hotels and its B&Bs fill quickly in summer. There are many more rooms available in the inns on the Pacific coast between the Navarro River and the town of Mendocino, approximately 45 minutes to an hour away from Greenwood Ridge Vineyards. Use the links below to look for lodging, and book early to make sure there’s a spot for you. - TE

Calfornia Wine Tasting Championships: California Wine Tasting Championships
Lodging: Anderson Valley Lodging
Anderson Valley: Anderson Valley Info return to top