By Hank Bruce (OCWS History Committee)

Did you know the Orange County Wine Society was officially incorporated on June 8, 1976 through the efforts of Brant Horton and eighteen other local wine enthusiasts?

It all started in May 1976 when Brant Horton, an Orange County wine retailer in Tustin, formulated a plan to host a professional competition of California wines. Each year only certain varietals would be judged. Those varietals were organized into three price categories. All wines would have to be commercially available in Orange County, and all wines within the selected varietal would be judged, whether they were donated or purchased. The judges would either be commercial winemakers or winery principals.

The first annual Commercial Wine Competition was held on July 10, 1977 at the South Coast Plaza Hotel in Costa Mesa, California, with the support of the Orange County Fair and hosted by the OCWS. A total of 92 individual wines (59 Chenin Blancs and 23 Gamay Beaujolais) were rated by 18 judges. In 1986, the 10th anniversary of the Commercial Wine Competition, Jerry Mead, founding member and syndicated wine columnist in more than a dozen newspapers, headed the expected panel of 76 judges, who evaluated over 2,600 wines at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California.

The initial three-day Commercial Wine Competition was reduced to two days in 1990 and entries stabilized at 2,400 with about 50 varietals and styles of wine. The host hotel has changed several times through the years to include the Disneyland Hotel, the Anaheim Marriott and the Red Lion (now called  the Costa Mesa Hilton), where it has been held for over the past 30 years, except for 2020, when due to the pandemic, the 44th Commercial Competition was not held.

The Commercial Competition is a nine-month, major effort requiring about 6,000 volunteer hours and about 200 volunteers. The volunteers make invitation phone calls; physically receive, catalog and input wine entries into a database; steward wines; run a commercial dishwasher; dry glasses; direct traffic; verify scores; input data entries; compile results; coordinate judges’ food, etc., etc.

Our Commercial Wine Competition is the largest of its kind in the world and the second largest wine competition overall in California. In the 47 years of competition, there have been over 460 judges for a combined total of 3,326 years of experience. A renowned list of judges and their associated wineries have kept the competition at the top of its game and made the competition one of the most widely revered competitions of California wines anywhere. Let us not forget, it is our volunteers who keep this huge event running (pun intended).