News

President’s Message

This year’s highly successful Commercial Wine Competition, co-sponsored by the OCWS and the OCFEC, was held June 1 and June 2 at the Costa Mesa Hilton Hotel. The event took place under the direction of Competition Chair, Leslie Brown and Head of Judges Kevin Coy, along with Jane Goodnight and the Wine Competition Committee. The event featured 2,919 entries with 142 varietals entered. Eighty-nine Judges from throughout California, in panels of 5 judges, scored the wines entered.

To accomplish this precision undertaking required over 250 volunteers who contributed approximately 5,800 hours mailing brochures, making calls to wineries, receiving and cataloging wines under the direction of Liz and Lloyd Corbett, bagging, moving, washing and drying glasses, stewarding, wine verification and scoring, and data entry of the results. After the Competition, the award-winning wines were photographed and the winners made available online at Winecompetition.com. This Commercial Wine Competition website allows anyone to search for wines by award, price, sugar, varietal or winery. Kudos to Stacey Taylor for developing this comprehensive informational Wine Competition site.

A few interesting highlights from this year’s Commercial Wine Competition:

  • Entries—43% of our entries were from wineries new to the Competition. A record 256 cases of wine were delivered on a single day!
  • New Varietals—Falanghina, Macabeo and Norton.
  • Label Competition Awards—Best of Show—1849 Wine Company. Look for the label display at The Courtyard during the OC Fair.

The Home Wine Competition was held last month on Saturday, June 15 and was supported by almost 200 persons who volunteered as judges, stewards, administrators,