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Commercial Competition

Commercial Competition Behind the Scenes

The 49th annual OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition has just been held and now what’s left to be done is still a lot before starting prep work for the 50th annual competition next year. Each competition takes a full year from start to finish, and then we start all over again. Unless you’ve volunteered for this amazingly, professionally run, and labor-intensive event, I assure you, it is mindboggling as to what it takes to achieve success year after year.

By the time you read this, the 2025 competition will have taken place, but the competition is not technically completed until the last bottles are sorted, the award medals are mailed, and the Double Gold and Best of Class plaques have been hand delivered. Planning for the next year then begins barely two months after completion of the prior competition. The hotel contract for 2025 was negotiated three years ago, with the 2026 and 2027 in place, and the 2028 contract having just been negotiated. The first of several communications to over 4,000 wineries will be sent in September for the 2026 competition. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Commercial Competition Committee is comprised of a number of people, 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 hotel and banquet arrangements, to the volunteer coordinator, who schedules and directs 300 volunteers over the course of the competition season, to the judges’ liaison, who provides the judges with competition information and is available to them the entire weekend, to the data entry room supervisor, who sees that all the judge’s results are entered into the software data base, and the scoring and verification lead, who oversees confirmation of every judge’s individual scoring. Impressed yet?

How about a most vital role, Head of Cataloging who, with her crew, oversaw 2,465 wine entries this year? No, that is not bottles, it is entries, which equates to no less than 12,000 to 15,000 individual bottles processed. Then there’s the bagging coordinator, as the competition is a double-blind tasting. 

And let’s not forget that the wines and all equipment are transported to and from the hotel, which is the responsibility of the move coordinator. There’s also a technology supervisor and major support staff, as well as the supervisor for the Wine Sort, which places the wines in the Courtyard Cellar and storage for use at The Courtyard at the OC Fair and the next year’s wine auction. And, let’s not forget the Label Competition coordinators, whose team handles that competition throughout the weekend and, last, but not least, the OCWS marketing committee who has brought exposure of the competition to new heights this year.

I could continue to bore you with more statistics, positions and a complete list of the players who, out of their passion for the OCWS and the goodness of their hearts, take lead roles but, suffice it to say, all of this is accomplished at the hands of hundreds of dedicated volunteers without whom the OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition would not be what it is today. Truly amazing!

–Fran Gitsham, OCWS Vice President

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Commercial Competition History

OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition Judges

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Commercial Competition

Commercial Competition Volunteers

It’s hard to believe it’s time for volunteer signups for the 49th OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition. We have signups online this month, same as in previous years.

We try to flexible and ask the same of our volunteers. We can work together to make this another fun event. There are many areas where volunteer help is needed, stewarding, glass washing, drying and bagging a few days before the event.

Continuing the efficiency, the computer room, scoring verification and medals mailing will be assigned. A sign-up form is included on the website that identifies stewarding days, bagging nights and other work parties with times and dates. To qualify for stewarding, you are required to sign up for two additional work parties. We offer bagging, moving of wine to and from the competition site and sorting post competition.

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

Carrying trays of glasses is required if you volunteer to steward. It’s physical and can get tiring. Along with stewarding, you need to be prepared to assist your steward captain by opening wine bottles at the required time, preparing glasses for tags and cleaning up the judges’ tables as needed, while listening to your captain for direction. We are expecting to have carts this year, more than we had last year, as we found this increased our effectiveness greatly.

It is imperative that the wines are NOT opened first thing in the morning as has happened in the past. We have been asked to have as much consistency in timing for the opening of the wines per flight, so all are open as close to the same time as possible. 

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

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

Robyn Strom, Volunteer Coordinator

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Commercial Competition Home Wine 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

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Commercial Competition

Book Now for 2024 Commercial Wine Competition

If you plan on staying at the Costa Mesa Hilton Hotel for the weekend of the Commercial Wine Competition, please make reservations no later than May 17. The OCWS has booked a block of rooms for its members at a discounted rate and this rate is guaranteed only until that date or until sold out. […]

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Commercial Competition Members Corner

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

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Commercial Competition

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

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Commercial Competition Volunteer

Commercial Competition Volunteers

We are headed toward the 47th Commercial Competition this year and you should see the signups on our website in March, any day now. Boy this year has gone 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 […]

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Commercial Competition

Support Award-Winning Wineries from Competition

Help us get the word out about OCWS’ prestigious wine competition and California’s amazing wineries that have won medals at the OC Fair Commercial 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). […]

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Commercial Competition

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!