Wine Judging, Clover Hill and The Moonambel Pub

I had a great chat last night with Karina Dambergs, it was heaps of fun.

We spent a bit of time chatting about her daytime job, as winemaker for Clover Hill.  They have been doing some fantastic things with sparkling wine, winning lots of trophy bling here and there.  Their wine has also been served to some famous people such as

The Queen

Our Princess Mary

But the serious side of the show was chatting about judging at the Royal Hobart Wine Show.  Karina said on the show that the previous day they tasted 120 odd different glasses of Shiraz.  Sounds like a great job, yes?  Well it is not.

 

I remember doing similar tastings for my wine degree and it is serious work.  Hard work, concentrating all day.  For our exams, we were given 6 glasses of mystery wines (of a possible 8) and were asked to score it out of 20 (link to wine scoring system).  They then repeated that 3 more times over 2 days.  The idea is that you give the same wine the same score, if your good.  Not fun.

Wine judging is not as intense as that, as you are not marked on your result.  But it does require the same level of concentration for the whole day.  As a judge you are given your own flight of wines and asked to score them, in silence.  At the end of this you get together with the other judges of your panel, and an associate judge, and share your marks and add them together.  Then all the silver and gold medal wines are repoured, retasted and discussed, to determine if the results are fair.  Also the top wine may win a trophy so this needs to be decided.

And as Karina said in the interview, no one knows who the producers are, not until the presentation dinner on Wednesday night. 

We also spoke about the Moonambel Pub.  It is here.  If your in the area go visit, but not on a Sunday, no roast anymore.

Here is the podcast from the show:

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