By Fran Gitsham, Commercial Wine Competition Chair
Who could have imagined 50 years ago that, for the love of wine, the world’s largest California-only wine competition was being born? The OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition is now celebrating its golden anniversary. From the outside, the competition seems to run flawlessly, however, it is the workings behind the scenes that makes the competition a reality year after year and, unless you’ve volunteered for this amazingly, professionally run and labor-intensive event, you could have no idea what it takes. The fact that everything is done by volunteers is truly mindboggling and somewhat unbelievable.
The competition, which is the cornerstone of our organization and traditionally held the weekend following Memorial Day each year, is not technically completed until the last bottles are sorted and the awards medals are mailed toward the end of June. Initial planning actually begins for a competition three years prior with the hotel contract being negotiated and executed but, just barely two months after one year’s competition has been completed, the committee is in full swing for the next year.
The Commercial Competition Committee is comprised of 20 volunteers from the Chairperson, who heads the committee to the Director of Judges, who contacts and coordinates 90+ professional winemakers and winery principals to judge the competition, to the Facilities Coordinator who handles the rooms, meals and everything else hotel related, to the Tech and Data Entry Supervisor, who oversees data entry and equipment, to the Volunteer Coordinators, who schedule and direct almost 300 volunteers to the Judges Scoring Coordinator, and so on and so on. Amazed yet? No? Just keep reading.
How about a most vital role as Head of Cataloging who oversees upwards of 2,500 wine entries? That is not 2,500 bottles. It can be up to 15,000 bottles, as each entry consists of three to six bottles each. Then take into consideration the Bagging Coordinator, as the competition is a blind tasting, so the entries to be tasted must be bagged and labeled for pouring at the competition. Then everything that is done must be undone. No sooner does the competition end, than a Steering Committee of five compiles all the information and confirms the awards results. This is followed by each and every entry being photographed for publication on our results website (www.WineCompetition.com) and mailing notifications to the award-winning wineries, followed by the medals.
The above does not even take into consideration the Judges’ Liaison, Sorting Coordinator, Label & Bottle Competition Coordinators, Computer System Admin, Photography Coordinator and Marketing Coordinator, as well as more statistics and positions.
The bottom line is that all of this is accomplished at the hands of dedicated volunteers whom without the Commercial Wine Competition and the OCWS overall would not be what it is today. Truly amazing!