Commercial Competition

Event Wrapups

Commercial competition wrapup

The 48th annual Commercial Wine Competition was held on June 1-2 at the Hilton Hotel in Costa Mesa. The weekend found 88 professional winemakers and winery principals from throughout California judging 2,518 wines in the largest California-only wine competition in the world.

The high caliber of the wines was clearly evidenced by the awarding of 19 Best of Class designations, 147 Double Gold medals, 439 Gold medals, and a plethora of silver and bronze medals.

The Competition Committee worked tirelessly for nine months prior to the actual event to bring to fruition another unbelievably successful competition. Following are the committee members who put their hearts, sweat and tears into making the competition a reality:

Kevin Coy, Director of Judges

Bill Redding, Facilities Coordinator

Teri and John Lane, Head of Cataloging

Liz and Lloyd Corbett, Cataloging

Robyn and Dean Strom, Volunteer Coordinators

Rochelle Randel, Judges’ Liaison

Dave Stancil, Data Entry Supervisor

Marcy Ott, Scoring Verification Coordinator

George Ott, Move Coordinator

Dave White, Bagging

Greg Hagadorn, Sort Coordinator

George Cravens, Assist Extraordinaire

Carol Frank and Sam Puzzo, Label/Bottle Competition Coordinators

Carolyn Christian, Marketing

And the hundreds of volunteers who stewarded, staffed the kitchen, dried glasses, directed traffic, verified scores, input data entries, coordinated judges’ food, etc.

Each year I seem to marvel yet again at the dedication and cohesiveness of the hard-working committee members and volunteers. The competition is a living testament to what we can, and do, accomplish as a team. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to everyone who played any part in the success of the 2024 competition!

For competition results check out WineCompetition.com and look to enjoy some of the fruits of the labors of the winemakers who enter and support the competition and the OCWS.

—Fran Gitsham, 2024 OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition Chair

 

 Home competition wrapup

The 48th annual Home Wine Competition was held on June 8 at the OC Fairgrounds Huntington Beach Building. Five-hundred and 21 wines were judged and 462 awards were handed out to 183 winemakers.

It is amazing how the overall quality of the wines get better and better every year, since our winemakers founded the OC Wine Society in 1976, and held our first competitions in 1977. Although home winemakers cannot sell their wines, we tell our judges to evaluate each home wine as if it had a retail value of $20.  Many of our wines would sell for far more, with some of them possibly even competing with wines selling for over $100.

This year, I am happy to announce our Best of Show winners in five categories:

Don Sowers, Newport Beach, Best of Show Red Wine, for his 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon
Adam Gomolin, Oakland, Best of Show White Wine, for his 2023 Chardonnay
Thad Rodgers, Auburn, Best of Show Dessert Wine, for his 2022 Merlot Port
Rochelle Randel, Huntington Beach, Best of Show Fruit Wine, for her 2024 Estate Lemon Wine
Chris Miller, Fallbrook, Best of Show Label, for his 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon label.

We had 78 judges taste the entries and were supported by 82 people who worked behind the scenes before, during, and after to support such a complicated event.

As in years past, our OC Wine Society Cooks’ Caucus provided a hot breakfast and lunch for our volunteers. Both were FABULOUS, and we want to thank the 12 people who started weeks ago preparing the menu, purchasing the supplies and starting out early in the morning to make our competition such an enjoyable event!

Thank you to all of you who helped us on competition day and the weeks before and after. And special thanks to our Home Wine Competition leadership group, including Stacey and Wendy Taylor, John and Teresa Lane, Ed Reyes, Cheryl Knapp and Lynda Edwards for their weeks of involvement.

Because of all of your contributions, we were able to, once again, provide the high-quality competition that we are so proud of.

—Kevin Donnelly, OC Fair Home Wine Competition Chair

Wine Defect Identification Workshop Wrap-Up

The first OCWS Wine Defect Identification Workshop was held on June 15 with nearly 40 people attending. This event was designed to compare the Faulted “A” bottle, identified by the OCWS Commercial Wine Competition judges against the Non-Faulted “B” bottle. Attendees had the opportunity to experience 42 different faulted wines and learn about the defects. Working in groups, lively discussion ensued as the blind tasting made the identification of the faulted wine challenging. To make the task more interesting, each group also had to identify the varietal of the wine.

The collective energy of the groups was stimulating for everyone, regardless of the attendee’s experience level. Several members of the Winemakers’ Group attended as did several new and long-time OCWS members, all seeking to improve their wine knowledge. Each group collectively evaluated seven different wines, then all participants were invited to sample any of the 42 wines. The feedback from the participants was very positive, with a strong recommendation to make this an annual event.

Thank you to OCWS members CL & Adrienne Keedy, Mary Ann Mayer, Carolyn and Damian Christian, and Ed Reyes, who helped me make this inaugural event a great success. We hope to see you all at next year’s workshop.

 —Don Mayer

June 30, 2024
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Commercial Competition, Home Wine Competition
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Competitive Spirits

Who could have imagined that a small band of 16 like-minded, wine-loving people getting together 48 years ago could grow the largest competition of California-only wines in the world?

From that handful of passionate people and one small table at the very first competition, which had a whopping three varietals to be judged with a total of 49 entries, the OCWS continues to elevate the OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition, which now finds entries of upwards of 2,500 California commercial wines each year being judged by a distinguished panel of nearly 100 renowned California winemakers and winery principals.

One can only further envision just what it takes to successfully pull off the competition year after year. The event is overseen by the Commercial Competition Committee, which is comprised of a number of people from the chairperson, who heads the rest of the committee, to the cataloging coordinators who catalog and handle upwards of 15,000 bottles of wine. There is the director of judges, who coordinates all the judges and their activities and the facilities coordinator, who handles the hotel arrangements, room bookings and meals. There is also a judges’ liaison, the judges’ scoring coordinator, the data entry supervisory and the volunteer coordinators and the bagging, moving and sorting coordinators.

And, lest we forget, the more than 300 OCWS volunteers working each year doing all other jobs to make the competition more successful than the one before.

The competition itself isn’t, technically, complete until the results have been tabulated, medals awarded, remaining duplicate bottles sorted and photographed for publication and posted on our results website, winecompetition.com, and put to bed for further sorting for various purposes, such as pouring to the public at The Courtyard at the OC Fair and the annual Wine Auction.  And then, after just two months of taking deep breaths after the competition is completed, it all begins again in preparation for the next one.

If I have not provided enough information yet to have your heads spinning, I could continue to bore you with more statistics, positions and lists of people who, out of their passion for the OCWS, and the goodness of their hearts, take on all manners of positions.

This is truly just the beginning wherein you hear about volunteers running this organization. It is the hearts and minds of the OCWS members who bring everything we do to fruition in an amazingly competent and successful way.  All that can truly be said at the end of the day is that there is no organization, nor group of dedicated volunteers, anywhere that can rival the Orange County Wine Society!

Fran Gitsham, Chair, 2024 Commercial Wine Competition

April 25, 2024
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Commercial Competition, Members Corner
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Volunteers Needed for Annual Event

We are headed toward the 48th Commercial Competition June 1-2 and signups are ready now. Boy this year has gone by fast!

We understand that these are changing times and conditions; please be flexible and we can work together to make this another fun event. There are many areas where volunteer help is needed, stewarding, glass washing and drying. Continuing the efficiency, the computer input will be assigned.

A sign-up form is included on the website— ocws.org/2024-commercial-competition- volunteers/—that identifies stewarding days, two bagging nights and other work parties with times and dates. In order to qualify for stewarding, we need you to sign up for two additional work parties. We can offer bagging and moving of wine to and from the competition site, including sorting. We also will be assigning the ribbon mailing crew.

We definitely need your support for our work parties in order to run a successful competition. The good news is that we will have hired help for heavy lifting. No training is necessary as newer members will be teamed with competition veterans.

A quick check—if you volunteer to steward, it involves carrying trays of glasses. It’s physical and can get tiring. Along with stewarding, you need to be prepared to assist your steward captain by opening wine bottles, preparing glasses for tags, cleaning up the judges’ tables as needed and listening to your steward captain for direction. It’s really all about teamwork for this to be successful.

If you have any questions, please feel free to phone me at (562) 822-3382 or email strompharms@earthlink.net.

We look forward to your participation in this very important event.

—Robyn Strom,
OCWS Volunteer Coordinator

April 25, 2024
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Commercial Competition
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Support the Award-Winning Wineries from Our Competition

California has so many amazing wineries that have won medals at the OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition. Help us get the word out about our prestigious wine competition. Next time you are at a winery that has our medals or awards posted, take a picture with the awards and post it to social media (Facebook or Instagram). You can let people know they can find all the winners at WineCompetition.com. Make sure you tag it with @ocwinesociety and use the hashtags #ocfairwinecompetition and #ocwsloveswineries. Each month, we will draw a winner for a bottle of wine from the previous month’s posts!

September 25, 2023
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Commercial Competition
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Golden Opportunities

The OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition has long been a cornerstone of the Orange County Wine Society. What started out as a humble endeavor to feature California’s burgeoning wine industry has blossomed into one of the most revered competitions in the nation – due in no small part to the steady stream of volunteers who make each edition a success.

Now in its 47th year, the competition is more than winemakers anxiously waiting to see if their beloved handiwork will be rewarded with a medal. It’s a festive, yearly gathering of OCWS members that culminates with the big event the first weekend of June.

“It’s really very satisfying to see it all come together,” said Leslie Brown, who has served on the competition committee for 15 years. “I’ve never seen volunteers anywhere who have the devotion like ours do. It’s really enjoyable to be with all those people come competition weekend.”

The amount of time spent to successfully pull off the competition truly is a Herculean effort. Leslie estimates roughly 6,000 volunteer hours are needed from a couple of hundred volunteers along the way, beginning in the late summer/early fall when preparations begin for the next competition.

It wasn’t always that way. Only two varietals were judged at the first competition: Chenin Blanc and Gamay Beaujolais. At the time, the competition was created to mirror what was being done at the Los Angeles County Fair.

But while other competitions have wilted away, the OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition has navigated its way through hardships, including a global pandemic, to continue to serve as a shining beacon in the world of winemaking.

“No one dreamed of this in the beginning,” said Jane Goodnight, a longtime OCWS member who has been on the competition’s steering committee that is primarily responsible for tallying the judges’ scores and determining if a wine receives a medal. “It’s amazing to me that it’s still here. It has survived and thrived.”

In planning any big event, details are crucial. For the competition, updating the computer program for data entry was a monumental task but has been tremendously beneficial. Swapping out traditional wine glasses with Austrian crystal several years ago clarified the scores of good wines going up and bad wines going down.

“Good wines showed better and we started seeing more Double Golds,” Leslie said.

Beside the camaraderie, one of the biggest benefits is getting to take home recently opened bottles of wine to taste. As Brown puts it, “People really work hard for a third to a half bottle of wine.”

“It’s like you get a sneak peek of what’s going to be poured at the fair,” said Ms. Courtney, who has been a steward at the competition over the past five to six years. “At the end of each day of the competition, it’s like a treasure hunt during the bottle grab.”

Jane suggests members who haven’t yet experienced competition weekend give it a try because you not only are rewarded with free wine and the opportunity to rub shoulders with winemakers but you can create new friendships.

“I always recommend doing it because the organization was put together to run this competition,” she said. “It’s fun, it’s work and you may be tired because you were on your feet most of the day but if you are really interested in wine, you become more interested after talking to people.”

 

May 27, 2023
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Commercial Competition
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