To Sip and Spit With the Pros

My teeth are stained an inky black. My tongue is hot and dry. My head is foggy.

No matter how much I spit out, it’s impossible not to get a buzz going when sampling 50 wines. It’s 10 a.m. on the final day of the Los Angeles County Fair’s Wines of the World Competition. I have already ruled on dozens of white vintages this May morning, and now there are at least 20 glasses of red wine before me. Syrah, Merlot -- they all start to taste the same.

I am one of 90 judges about to anoint the best Cabernet Sauvignon of the contest. As the vote nears, I am unable to pick between Cab No. 21 and No. 22.

What does my mouth say? Are there hints of raspberry? Or rather black currant? Perhaps a touch of tobacco? Though I write for a living, my brain struggles to connect words to what swirls between my lips.

How about the aroma? Woody? Earthy? Resinous?

I reach for No. 22 one more time and my elbow knocks over a nearby glass. Dark red juice cascades off the table, spreading across my shirt, my khaki slacks, my notebook.

Groans emanate from the nearby judges as they too get splattered. All I can do is dispense napkins for blotting and apologize for my inability to manage two dozen glasses of wine in such a small workspace.

I feel like Thomas Kinkade at the Louvre.

Contests like this one have become a mainstay of America’s burgeoning wine business. Winemaking now goes on in all 50 states. Nearly every region holds a competition. Altogether there will be about 30 national wine competitions this year. With 3,792 entries from six continents, the L.A. Fair’s Wines of the World is surpassed in size only by the San Francisco International Wine Competition.

There is little mystery as to why wineries big and small go to the expense of entry fees, product cost and shipping to participate in events like this: A gold medal can lift sales. When Geyser Peak Winery’s California Sauvignon Blanc won the “best of class” award last year, its Southern California sales tripled to 750 cases the following month.

The L.A. Fair helps market its winners. It will sell the wines in its wine pavilion when the fair starts Sept. 10. It also provides vintners with stickers to put on the winning vintages. And it is asking Southern California restaurants and retailers to make special pitches for the wines.

Wine competitions started as a way for fairs to promote a region’s agricultural products. Now they are a ubiquitous part of the food and wine scene.

So, what qualifies me to be such an arbitrator of taste? Not much. I have always kept a case or two of wine around the house, but could hardly be labeled a connoisseur. The fact is, I ended up as a judge for a very simple reason: I cover the California agriculture business for The Times and have written several articles on the wine industry. That apparently was enough to qualify me in the eyes of the L.A. County Fair.

Initially it looked like a lark -- two nights at the Pomona Sheraton on The Times’ expense account and all the wine I could drink.

But as Bob Small, dean of Cal Poly Pomona’s hospitality management school and contest chief, escorts me to my judging station at the fairgrounds, it’s clear that I am in way over my head. The resumes of the judges on my panel confirm this.

To my right is Peter Marks, who is one of only 20 individuals living in the U.S. certified as a Master of Wine. Among other tests, Masters of Wine must be able to blindly sample groups of wines and identify the grape variety, its vintage and the country of origin.

On my left is Steve Pepe, a retired labor attorney who now operates the boutique winery Clos Pepe Vineyards in the Santa Rita Hills near Santa Ynez, Calif.

Rounding out the panel is Ann Littlefield of New Vine Logistics, a shipping company that helps wineries navigate the complex interstate sales and distribution rules. Littlefield will judge 10 competitions this year.

Luminaries and industry royalty sit at almost every other table. There’s Heidi Barrett, winemaker for the $1,500-a-bottle Screaming Eagle cult Cabernet; Traci Dutton, the sommelier who oversees the Culinary Institute of America’s 30,000-bottle cellar at the famous Greystone center in St. Helena, Calif., and Robin Lail, whose great-granduncle Gustav Niebaum founded Inglenook Vineyards in 1879.

Impressive as their credentials are, most of the judges defy my image of wine snobs. In fact, some of them are more like party animals, tasting 100 wines in the morning, tossing back two beers at lunch and sampling 50 more wines in the afternoon. They drink wine with dinner, and retire to the bar for beer and margaritas.

That’s not to say they’re immune to alcohol. I walked into the lobby of the Sheraton one evening to find 14 judges jumping on a king-size bed set up by the hotel to pitch its room upgrades. In the bar, a post-midnight food fight broke out with limes left over from the evening’s margaritas.

But there’s no doubt about their culinary expertise, as evidenced by their ability to answer arcane questions in a barroom electronic trivia game, such as what makes up bearnaise sauce or benedictine.

In fact, these judges confide that the best thing for wine would be to lose its pretentious image.

“We have built up such a mystique about wine. There is this whole hierarchy of knowledge that people pretend to have,” Marks explains. “We turn off many potential wine lovers because of it.”

Marks says taste is to a large degree subjective. People have different sensitivities to the four components of taste -- sweet, sour, salty and bitter, he says, and “for that reason you can never predict whether a person is going to like a wine or not.”

Adding to the complexity of wine tasting is the fact that the chemical composition of the grape is unique among fruit. A raspberry might have a couple of dozen components that make up its flavor, but a grape is stuffed with hundreds, explains Hildegarde Heymann of UC Davis’ Department of Viticulture & Enology. And many of those components are the same chemicals found in cherries, peaches and the other fruits used to describe the character of a wine.

These hints of other foods don’t show up in a raw grape because many of the flavor-causing components are chemically bound, just waiting for fermentation to split them apart. Moreover, the yeast that turns the grape’s sugar into alcohol contributes more compounds, adding to the complexity of wine. Secondary fermentations and aging in oak casks produce even more aromas and flavors.

As my panel gets down to the business of tasting wine, I can see that food is going to be a big part of this. Over three days, the judges plow through 135 pounds of jack, cheddar and brie cheese, 240 cans of gourmet olives, 40 pounds of rare roast beef and 35 cases of still and sparkling water.

The munchies dull the constant buzz and clear the palate, helping judges differentiate between the wines. Foods with fat and oils are especially good because they diminish the astringent action of tannins in the red wines.

The judging process established by the fair follows a strict choreography. A server sets a series of numbered glasses before each judge. The judges have no idea who has made the wine they are sampling or even what region it is from.

Each judge tastes the wine and spits into a “dump bucket.” That keeps us from getting plastered in short order. Still, we get a slow buzz as alcohol is absorbed through the tissues of the mouth and we inevitably swallow tiny portions. My spitting technique is neither dainty nor refined, so a handy supply of napkins is a must.

We taste, spit and make notations in a workbook. Then we go around the table and rate the wines. Our group had a surprisingly strong consensus, generally agreeing when an offering deserved a medal, although we sometimes debated whether it was a silver or a gold.

Most judges don’t talk when tasting, to avoid prejudicing the views of other panel members. In our group, there was an exception to the rule -- it was fair to give a warning about a DNPIM wine. For the uninitiated like myself, that means “do not put in mouth.” It is a wine that is so bad it can be ruled out by smell alone.

I missed just such a warning in the middle of a large flight of 34 Cabernets. The experience was not unlike aspirating Coca-Cola through the nose.

Marks, who by now had been elevated in my eyes from mentor to guru, gave me a knowing nod and said, “Brett infection.” Huh?

Apparently, this wine had been infected with a Brettanomyces, a type of yeast that is found naturally on grapes but can be a big spoiler. In concentration, it gives off a number of nasty aromas and flavors, which Marks used words like “plastic Band-Aid,” “vomit” and “fecal” to describe.

Most wines are at least decent. But the bad and flawed wines -- which make up less than 10% of the entries -- really jump out, leaving the judges wondering what the winemakers were thinking in entering them.

Setting aside those few stinkers, one thing quickly becomes obvious: Almost everyone wins a medal.

The L.A. Fair divides wines by varietal and year, as well as by price. In some judges’ minds that is too many categories and thus too many medals. It is possible that a $9 Cabernet from one producer is better than a $50 bottle from another, but for the most part, they never go head to head. Charles Shaw entered five $1.99-a-bottle wines and won two silver and one bronze medals. But there was no way to see how Two Buck Chuck matched up against pricey competitors.

Despite an admonition by Small to be more judicious when handing out bronze awards, there’s no doubt that medal inflation is running rampant.

About 60% of the entries collected an award of some sort, hardly an exclusive group. More than a quarter of all entered were bronze winners, but were for the most part forgettable wines. More than 8% -- 317 wines -- won gold, and did in fact stand out from the other entries.

I fall into the trap of nominating too many wines for awards. I vote to award medals to 12 of the 34 offerings in one Cabernet Sauvignon category. My favorite is a Napa Valley Cab from Charles Creek Vineyard, a wine we elevate to “best of class” -- the top Cabernet in the $25-to-$40 price range. But I also like No. 14, a reserve Cab, which my partners think is a dog.

It’s not just the judges at this competition who are guilty. At this year’s San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, 78% of the 2,500 entries garnered awards.

I asked my colleagues whether the copious number of medals meant there was a lot of good wine being made or whether it signified that the judges -- typically people connected to the industry -- didn’t want to offend anyone.

It’s a bit of both, they said.

“Medals keep the wineries interested,” explains Marks, whose rarified credentials make him a desirable judge on the competition circuit. “If there were just a few medals handed out, wineries would see little value in submitting entries.”

Most of the wine I tasted was decent. That’s a big change from several decades ago when one out of five wines could be tossed on smell alone, veteran judges say.

Now, however, my task isn’t to decide what’s decent. I need to vote for what’s best.

After cleaning up my spill, I timidly reach for Cabernet 22 one more time. I swirl the wine in the bowl of the glass. Most people in the room can hold the goblet by the stem or the base and with a quick flick of the wrist send the wine spinning up the sides. This aerates the wine so a judge can smell all the aromas. But I keep the base of the glass planted firmly on the table during my spin. No more messes.

A hint of alcohol wafts from the juice. This is the sign of the type of high-alcohol-content wine that has become so popular among Americans today, to the consternation of many of the old-line French producers in Bordeaux. The alcohol can burn the flavor of the wine, not to mention the taste of the accompanying food. But this vintage is just on the edge. It’s full and balanced and seems like it would be beautiful with a juicy lamb chop or rib steak. It has a touch more heft than the other top Cabernet.

Small calls for the vote. Wine 21 gets 35 hands. A good showing.

Small calls out “No. 22.” About the same number of hands go up. I add mine. The count reaches 37.

Only later do the judges learn that No. 22 -- the wine crowned as the best of 381 Cabernet Sauvignons in the contest, is a 2000 Grgich Hills Cellar from Napa Valley.

Over three days I have judged 250 wines -- including Ehrenfelser, Riesling and Sylvaner, a hybrid developed almost 100 years ago in Germany, and Mourvedre, a fine red grape mostly grown in France. I still wouldn’t call myself a connoisseur, but I now know enough to easily look beyond the ubiquitous Cabernets, Merlots and Chardonnays that occupy so much of a typical restaurant’s wine list.

As we pack up our notes and say our goodbyes, we all walk past a display of gourmet olive oils -- the results of a similar fair contest held at the same time.

I know all about olive oil. You mix it with vinegar and dip your bread into it. Hmm, maybe next year.