Inside the Lone Star International Wine Competition

Wine competitions are a popular source for consumers to have confidence when buying wine. Imagine yourself in a wine shop walking the aisles of bottles and you just don’t know which bottle to take home. You may settle on an award-winning wine as one you’d feel confident to buy without having tasted it first. This is really the whole point behind wine competitions – to reward wineries who produce good wines and make it easier for you to choose a wine.

But have you ever thought about what goes into a wine competition so that your wine shopping is easier? Things are quite complex behind the scenes of a wine contest. Cases and cases and cases of wines are entered with hopes of gaining recognition for their hard work. And let’s be honest, in the hopes of boosting sales.

Any wine competition is the result of countless hours given by volunteers. Of course, our state’s Texas Wine and Grape Growers Association (TWGGA) has staff on board to organize the event and manage the data. But these folks can’t make it happen all on their own. We require a team of volunteers, including organizers, wine pourers, data entry, and judges.

The Grapevine Wine Pouring Society is a local North Texas organization of folks who love wine, and they volunteer to control the room behind closed doors where they organize and pour the wines. As this is a big job, TWGGA is incredibly lucky to have the continued support of this group.

Let me see if I can paint a picture for you… there are 712 separate entries into the competition this year. A winery pays the entry fee and supplies four bottles of the wine they enter. One bottle is opened for the initial judging of the wine. If a wine is thought to be a bit off or flawed, a second bottle is opened and poured for the judges. An additional bottle may be opened for a tiebreaker or if a wine wins the top score in its category or class. Winning wines are used for future fundraising events to fund the operation of TWGGA and the scholarships made available to students studying winemaking or grape growing.

Our 30 judges are divided into six panels, each with five judges. Each panel is served a different flight of wines. So, for example, one table receives a flight of six Tempranillo wines while the next panel tastes a flight of five Sangiovese. Each judge on the panel tastes the same wines. And every judge scores each wine based on its own merits. (Editor’s note: This is why it may seem there are many medals given out – they are not competing against other wines at first, but on their own.)

In other words, a judge grades a single wine based on whether it is a good example of what the wine is supposed to be. Does the Tempranillo have the appearance, aroma, body, taste, and finish expected of a Tempranillo? The scores of each of the five judges go to our volunteer data collectors who enter the grades into the computer system. A final score is calculated for each wine and assigned the medal won by that wine.

This competition awards a Bronze, Silver, Gold, and then a Double Gold for those wines receiving the highest scores. Organizers set aside the Gold and Double Gold winning wines. The Bronze and Silver winners are used as gifts for the volunteers and as wines to be poured at future TWGGA events such as the November Grape Camp and February’s annual conference.

The Tempranillo that wins a Double Gold and has the highest grade of all the Tempranillo wines is deemed Best in Tempranillo category. The unopened bottles of this wine have to be set aside for the next level of judging.

We need to have at least four entries of a particular type of wine for there to be a category set up for that wine. In other words, Grüner Veltliner is a fairly rare wine. If we have four Grüner Veltliner wines entered, they are judged together in a category where a Best Grüner Veltliner medal can be awarded. If there are three or fewer Grüner Veltliner entered, these all go in a category called White-Other Varietals. These Grüner Veltliner wines are tasted alongside other white wines that do not have a category of their own. This year we had one Arinto, one Grüner Veltliner, two Picardan, one Marsanne, and one Semillon to make up the category White-Other Varietals. Becker Vineyard’s Semillon was awarded a Double Gold and had the highest score in this category, which means it also won Best in White-Other Varietals category.

We poured the first wines of the day at 9:30 a.m. and finished the last flights at 3:30 p.m. Each judge tasted between 103 and 120 wines on this day. It is certainly fun! But it’s also exhausting to taste so many wines. Of course, these are all wine professionals – they spit, clean their palates with crackers, and drink plenty of water. I was pleased that everyone kept their wits about them. Some judges even met up for wine after the tastings, believe it or not!

On the second day of judging, all of the Gold and Double Gold winning wines are poured for all judges so Best in Class awards can be assigned. All judges taste the same wines for this phase of the competition. The scores determine the best wine in the classes of white wine, rosé wine, sparkling wine, red wine, dessert wine, fortified wine, and fruit wine. In the end, the highest-scoring wines in each class are awarded a Grand Star.

All told, a complex arrangement of people and places is needed for a successful event. All contestants are logged into special wine competition software called Enofile. A large temperature-controlled storage room is required to store all the wine entries until the start of the event setup. And all of the entries have to be received into storage. Our data entry volunteer, TWGGA staff of three, and I work behind the scenes for several months as entries roll in. The Grapevine Convention Center is needed three days before the event plus the two days of judging. Nearly three thousand bottles of wine are transported from the storage facility to the convention center. A separate storage facility is used for the 2,000 wine glasses used for the competition, and these are carefully moved to the convention center. The Grapevine Wine Pouring Society volunteers unpack and set up all of the wines comparing the actual data on the bottle to the spreadsheet of details based on the individual wine entries. We make any needed corrections and finalize the order the wines are poured. Two full days and fifteen volunteers are needed for the organization process. We’re talking about a lot of wine! I am thankful for the thirty-four judges, thirty-seven volunteers, a staff of three, and the catering service that pulled this off. Wow – what an experience!

You can find the Texas winery awards here: 2022 Lone Star International Wine Competition – Texas Results

And I’d like to give a special shout-out to some of my favorite wineries that did well: Hilmy Cellars, Adega Vinho, Rustic Spur, Sandy Road, Ron Yates, and Becker Vineyards.

Cheers y’all!