YOUR SERVING- Wine Awards Part 3 - 081225

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back. We are talking wine and the Royal Hobart
Wine Show. We have Marco Callahan who is the Chief
Judge and Jeremy Deneen who is the Royal Hobart Wine
Show Committee Chair with us. Now, judges come through for
these from lots of different areas. How do you go
about making up the panel of judges?

Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's pretty simple for me. I select the chief Judge
and he does all the rest of the work.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Are these all people that you've met over time?

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Not all of them. It's like any the more senior
end of any specialty. Most of us know each other well,
know of each other reasonably well. You've got to be
careful of just sending out invites to all your mates. Yeah,
you know, that's not cool. When it comes to selecting,
you need a balance of more senior, experienced people who
really know their stuff. And then it's a tremendous development

(00:48):
environment for younger talent as well. So you do also
need a spread of judges from around the country as well.
There is talent from coast to coast US a big
country like.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
This, so there's more than just Tasmanian people on the board.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Obviously, absolutely. I mean of the more senior judges here.
Let's say that the four panel chairs plus me, only
one of them is from Tazzy.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
I guess that stops people from trying to pick stuff
from their own backyard, a bit like Eurovision, you can't
vote for your own country pretty much.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
But all the wines are tasted, we would describe it
as they are tasted blind. All any judge knows they
have a glass that has a number in front of it,
and they know that they know what class they're judging.
It might be twenty twenty three Chardonnays, and that wine
there is just number seven.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
It's probably important to point out there's a team of
judges that assess each class of wine. Each wine is
looked at by at least four people, and there's a
consensus score. Come to with that and the reason you
have a chief judge. The panels will taste potentially one
hundred wines a day each, and some of them they
might taste three or four times, so that one hundred
ones quickly turns into one hundred and forty or one

(01:56):
hundred and sixty. So the chief judge comes in with
a clear palet, only tasting a few of the wines.
Each day and provides I guess, clarity and direction, so
you get to swallow everything you taste.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
I know that would make it a very short day.
You want.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Now all of these wines that come through because it's
a Tasmanian thing. Are the areas that Tasmania is doing well?
Are there areas that it's lagging behind?

Speaker 3 (02:19):
The areas in which Tassy is best known for making
some of the best wines.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
In the country.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Pino, Chardoneye and sparkling One's that's sort of.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
The main game.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
And that comes as no surprise now when it comes
to the pino in our class, Tassy was ascendant there.
All of the gold medals, all of the wines that
hit gold medal standard were all from Tazzy.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
That's incredible.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
And this is a prize that people particularly want to win,
not just because it's our sort of hero red variety
in the state, but the trophy for the best peno
noir in the Royal Wine Show attracts a pretty significant
travel bursary. The winner gets to take a trip. Normally
they want to go to Burgundy, but potentially anywhere they
want to go to have a look at cool ones.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
There is a big shift going on all around the
world from bigger, richer styles of red wine towards medium
and lighter styles of red like silkier textured wines. The
fact is that when it comes to red's, what Tassy
does best is exactly where the whole wine industry almost

(03:27):
around the world is moving towards.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
That's excellent news for Tasmania.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Absolutely, there's a bit of healthy, friendly competition that goes on,
depending on the area I seem to find there is.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
But the one thing that gives Tazzy a really unique
competitive advantage that can't be replicated anywhere else is our climate.
You know, there's two hundred and sixty kilometers of water
between us and the nearest grapes at the sort of
southern point of Victoria, and we're an island, we're surrounded
by water, so you know, we have a pretty moderate climate.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Is there a place that you can go to find
out if you're interested in having a look at who
won the medals at the show?

Speaker 2 (04:05):
So the catalog of results is downloadable on the Royal
Agricultural Society's website and all available there with the list
of all the trophies, all the gold medals, and you
know if those things don't take your fancy, you can
scroll through the list of all the different wines that
were entered in the shows and you see which got gold, silver, bronze,

(04:29):
or you know, maybe your favorite one didn't get a
medal at all. Doesn't necessarily mean that you need to
change your reference.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Like.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
That's the thing about wine. Everybody has different personal tastes.
You might like anchovies, your friend might hate anchovies. Are
either of you right or wrong?

Speaker 1 (04:48):
I hate anchiovies, I'm right. Well, thank you very much
for coming and having a chat with us today. It's
been very enlightening as far as wine shows go. We've
been talking with Marco Callahan, the chief judge, and Jeremy Deneen,
the Royal Hobart Wine Show Committee Chair. It's been an
absolute pleasure. That's thanks having Thanks very much, Bro,