We interrupt your normal levelheaded Vinography programming with the following outraged rant.

Listen up wine industry folks, this whole state fair thing has gone on long enough and it just needs to stop. If I hear one more winery boasting that their Zinfandel won a gold medal at the Butte County fair, and silver at the Cal State Expo, I think I’m going to be sick.

And listen up wine consumers, while I explain to you how utterly ridiculous and meaningless these awards are, and how you should never use them as part of your decision for purchasing a wine.

What I am about to tell you is why, by the way, you shouldn’t join the hordes of people who rushed to Trader Joes yesterday after it was announced that Two Buck Chuck Chardonnay won a double gold at the California State Fair wine competition (most every Trader Joe’s is sold out of Chardonnay as a result anyway, so you’re late to the game no matter what).

State and county fair medals and awards for wine are not entirely bogus, but are close enough that everyone should completely ignore them. I trust a medal from a county fair about wine, about as much as I trust my vegan friends’ recommendations on what restaurants I’d enjoy in San Francisco. Which is to say, not even as far as I could throw them.

First of all, I need a show of hands from the folks that actually regularly go to state fairs. Now I need a show of hands for people who have actually watched any of the judging of competitions that goes on at these state fairs. Now I need a show of hands of people who have actually entered things into these competitions.

I’m betting there aren’t a lot of hands raised out there, but I’ll tell you what. Mine is. I’ve spent an awful lot of time at state and county fairs in my day, so listen up: the so called “competitions” that take place at these fairs and the awards they give out are exercises in mediocrity and the constraints of a limited playing field.

The primary reasons why no one should ever pay attention to an award given to a wine by some sort of fair:

1. While some of the biggest fairs actually get professional wine critics and winemakers to be judges, many of the judges for these wine competitions are simply folks who just work in the industry, or even worse, sometimes are just people who “enjoy” wine.

2. Every fair I’ve been to has got about 1000 different categories of competition for each general area of judging. Entrants don’t compete for the best wine, or the best red wine, they compete for the best Zinfandel, or maybe even worse, the best old vine Zinfandel. This matters because…

3. Often times there are only a few entries in each category. These competitions are not demonstrations of the best products or talent out there, they are demonstrations of choosing among the best of the (sometimes awful) products entered. While on occasion I have seen fairs decline to give out awards when there are an egregiously small number of entrants (say, less than three) but generally they give out an award no matter what. So winning a gold medal can be simply a matter of being the least crappy entrant in a field of three.

4. Did I mention that the only wines that get evaluated are wines that are deliberately entered by potential competitors? This is a problem at ALL such wine competitions, no matter where they are. The title of “best wine” at such and such competition should NEVER be given much credence by consumers since we have no idea who that wine was competing with. At state and county fairs, this is a huge problem, as it is very unlikely that any category of wine has a “representative” sample of wines to judge against.

5. Oh, did I mention that the wines sent to these competitions are sent by the wineries themselves. You only need to see what happened at the New Zealand Cuisine wine awards to understand the issues with this approach. And can you believe that the folks at the New Zealand competition actually test the wines that are sent to them against samples purchased from retail store shelves to make sure they are the same? Guess how often the California State Fair has ever done that? Right. Never, ever, ever. If you think that every winery simply just pulls a random bottle out of one of their cases that is destined for Joe’s Liquor Mart to send to these wine competitions, I’ve got a bridge in Napa to sell you.

So far be it for me to deny Fred Franzia his upset victory, and the last thing I would want to do is imply that he sent extra special wine to the competition.

But I do want to say that I tend to agree with my friend Jack, who expressed his amazement at the news to me this way: “They should just fire all those judges and start over.”

Wineries, stop bragging about your medals and start telling people interesting things about you and your wine, and how and why you make it. Consumers, do yourself a favor and ignore any piece of wine marketing that talks about fair medals. Though you might start noticing the very limited overlap between wines that get scores or good reviews by any wine critic (take your pick) and those that get medals. Coincidence? Well, let’s just say that you don’t see really good restaurants setting up booths at county fairs for a reason. They don’t have to.

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The Hidden Mountain

“This image was shot with a special lens that tilts and shifts, a feature that changes the relationship between the front piece of glass and the back piece of glass. Essentially it gives me the ability to set a shallow focus for the image right where I want it. In this case, I was focusing on the two mountaintops. I love the way the back mountain is peeking through the fog and the light.”– Michael Regnier

INSTRUCTIONS:
Download this image by right-clicking (Mac users, click and hold) on the image and selecting “save link as” or “save target as” and then select the desired location on your computer to save the image. Mac users can also just click the image and drag it to your desktop.

To set the image as your desktop wallpaper, Mac users should follow these instructions, while PC users should follow these.

PRINTS:
If you are interested in owning an archive quality print of this image, or any of the other vineyard images featured here on Vinography, you can purchase one on the Michael Regnier Photography web site for $85.

ABOUT VINOGRAPHY IMAGES:
Every Thursday, Vinography features a new image from photographer Michael Regnier for readers’ personal use as desktop backgrounds or screen savers. We hope you enjoy them. Please respect Michael’s copyright on these images.

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When I think of Italy as wine producing country, I tend to think to think of it as ancient. It is the home of thousands of indigenous varieties of grapes, and people have been making wine for centuries, sometimes in the very same spot for dozens of generations. This is certainly true in many of the most established and famous of Italy’s wine regions. What I tend to forget is that there are other wine regions which are relatively new, in which the standards for what is good and what is not are still being defined by every new vintage.

Tuscany’s Maremma is one such region. Mild and coastal, this section of Italy (like pretty much anywhere in the country that has been constantly populated throughout history) has had some grapes grown in it for centuries, but as a wine producing region it was essentially inconsequential until as recently as 30 years ago. This was mostly because up until the early part of the 20th century it was a swamp filled with bandits and clouds of malarial mosquitoes.

But in recent decades the Maremma has started to pique the interest of some Tuscan winemakers attracted to the mild, consistent weather. In 1994 the Bolgheri DOC appellation was established, largely on the reputation of Sassicaia and Ornellaia, the two most famous wines from the region, and the area became a heavy target for investment and winery development.

Interested has cooled slightly, and some very interesting wines are emerging from the region, among which are the wines from the brand-spanking-new estate of Enrico Santini. Santini set up shop as a newcomer in just the last few years, carving out a small 30 acres of vineyards amongst the much larger estates in the Bolgheri DOC. In contrast to some of these bigger wineries, Santini makes his wine in his basement and his garage, earning him the designation as the first Bolgheri garagiste winemaker.

No one would have paid much attention to a young guy with a tiny plot of vineyards and some wine barrels in his garage, except that in his first two years of making wine, with grapevines bearing their first usable fruit, Santini was awarded the coveted Tre Bicchieri award from the Gambero Rosso wine guide for one of his wines.

Needless to say, people are paying a lot of attention to Santini now, even though he is only on his sixth vintage at this point. Santini is a native of the region, having grown up in the village of Castagneto Carducci, and he has settled in with the assuredness of someone whose boots are familiar with the land. He planted his own vineyards from scratch on virgin soil, and planted only as many vines as he thought he could realistically tend to himself. He farms his gentle hillside plots of grapes biodynamically, which pretty much ensures that as their sole guardian, he is out amongst his vines from first light to well past sunset almost every day.

Santini makes three wines, a white, and two reds, one of which is more Sangiovese based, and this Supertuscan style red which is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, and a small amount of Sangiovese. For his red wines, Santini vinifies and ages each varietal separately before assembling the final blend.

The grapes are babied by hand from the vine to the vat, where they undergo an extended maceration period of an amazing 20-28 days on average, before primary fermentation. The wine ages in French oak barrels for 18 months where it undergoes a secondary fermentation. It is aged for another year in the bottle before release. 1400 cases produced.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample

Tasting Notes:
Dark garnet in color, this wine has a rustic nose of leather and barnyard aromas that lean towards the horsey end of the spectrum, but hold back from being unpleasant in their pungency. Once in the mouth, however, the wine shows excellent balance and a lovely concoction of boysenberry, blueberry and earthy flavors. Light tannins offer some muscle without sacrificing smooth drinkability, which is certainly one of the best features of this wine. A pleasant finish rounds off a very pleasant trip across the palate.

Food Pairing:
I’d love to drink this wine with the classic tripe alla fiorentino (tripe in spicy tomato sauce), though it would go equally well with a classic tuscan grilled veal chop with rosemary and olive oil.

Overall Score: 8.5/9

How Much?: $52, though occasionally deals can be found for much cheaper.

This wine is available for purchase on the internet. Santini’s wines are imported by VINTUS imports.

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