The 46th Annual Commercial Wine Competition was held on June 4 and 5 at the Hilton Hotel in Costa Mesa. The weekend found 85 professional winemakers and winery principals judging 2,516 wines, and the OCWS resoundingly rebounding from a couple of strange COVID restricted years and, although we were still in the midst of a milder variant outbreak, hundreds of volunteers braved the current COVID environment to bring a successful end to another amazing Competition.
The Competition Committee worked tirelessly since last September to make this happen and will have just enough time to take a deep breath before beginning again this September in anticipation of 2023.
Following are the Committee members who put their hearts, sweat and tears into making this Competition a reality and a raving success:
- Kevin Coy, Head of Judges
- Liz & Lloyd Corbett, Wine Cataloging Leads and Mentors
- Stacey Taylor, Tech Lead/Competition Software and Results Website Creator
- Robyn & Dean Strom, Volunteer Coordinators
- Rochelle Randel, Judges’ Liaison
- Bill Redding, Facilities Coordinator
- Chris Bruce, Scoring Verification Lead
- Greg Hagadorn, Move Coordinator and
Bagging/Sort Mentor - Dave White, Wine Bagging
- George Cravens, Assist Extraordinaire
- Carolyn Christian, Marketing
- Sam Puzzo & Carol Frank, Label/Bottle Competition
Coordinators
And, although not technically on the Committee roster, I would be remiss if I did not mention:
- Dave Stancil, Data Entry Coordinator
- Leslie Brown, New Committee Chair Mentor
- Jane Gold, Head of Judges’ Assist
- Teri & John Lane, Cataloging Understudies
And the hundreds of volunteers who stewarded, manned the kitchen, dried glasses, directed traffic, verified scores, and data entries, input data entries, coordinated judges’ food, etc., etc.
As a first year Competition Chairperson, I couldn’t have imagined a more cohesive, accommodating, and hard-working Committee to make me feel really great about what we all accomplished as a team! My heartfelt gratitude goes out to everyone who had anything to do with the success of the Competition and for personally holding mine, and each other’s hands and hearts!
For Competition results check out WineCompetition.com and look to enjoy some of the fruits of the winemakers’ labors.
– Fran Gitsham, 2022 Commercial Wine Competition Chair