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