Gold-medal wines' wins often fleeting

Wineries covet gold medals and spend millions of dollars a year entering wine in competitions and paying fees in hopes they will be able to brag about awards on their bottles and boast about them in pitches to tasting-room customers and wine-club members.

But a study of U.S. wine contests this week suggests consumers should not always assume gold-medal winners are outstanding wines.

Writing in the Journal of Wine Economics, retired California State University, Humboldt, professor Robert Hodgson said he looked at the results for several thousand wines entered in 13 U.S. wine competitions in 2003 and found little consistency in what wines won gold medals.

The study said that of almost 2,500 wines entered in more than three competitions, 47 percent won a gold medal in at least one contest.

However, of those gold-medal winners, 98 percent were regarded as just above average or below in at least one of the other competitions. Hodgson said that demonstrates how little consistency there was from contest to contest.

"Of the wines that entered five competitions and got at least one gold, about 75 percent also received no award in at least one of the remaining competitions," he said.

"How can you explain this huge discrepancy?" the professor asked. "Either the wineries are sending nonuniform samples to competitions or the judges are simply unreliable instruments for assessing quality."

Hodgson, who taught oceanography and statistics, owns the small Fieldbrook Winery north of Eureka in Humboldt County. He decided to study wine competitions after seeing his wines win in some and garner no awards in others.

He drew the ire of many wine-contest organizers this year when he published a study of the California State Fair Wine Competition that found judges often rated the same wine differently when they tasted it twice in a blind group of wines.

He's also taking heat for this report.

"The conclusion that everything is just chance is hogwash," said Robert Small, chairman of the Los Angeles County Fair's giant wine contest.

"Our mission is to provide factual, good information to consumers," he said, defending the judges' skills.

The competition also provides many wineries with an "affordable way" to get their wine noticed in an industry dominated by giant corporations with large marketing budgets, Small said.

Joe Roberts, who writes the 1WineDude blog and is a certified wine educator, said Hodgson's study fails to address wide differences in the way the contests are managed and in the tasting skills of judges.

A gold medal from a well-designed contest would be "meaningful" but looks "random" when lumped together with data from all the other competitions, he said.

Still, Roberts, who does not judge wine contests, said it's wise for consumers to be cautious.

"There is no place where a consumer can go to understand whether an award at one competition is any better than an award at another," Roberts said.