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Mark Fisher is the author of Uncorked and is the food and dining reporter for the Dayton Daily News.

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Home > Blogs > Uncorked > Archives > 2006 > December > 06

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

NZ wine scandal could threaten the credibility of wine reviews, contests worldwide

By Mark Fisher | Wednesday, December 6, 2006, 07:26 AM

There’s a very intriguing wine scandal fermenting in New Zealand, where an award-winning wine was stripped of its gold medal after it was determined the sample sent to contest judges was completely different from the identically labeled wines available to the public. The winemaker involved is scrambling to limit the fallout from the incident, and says there was no intent to deceive.

Still, I believe this scandal could reverberate well beyond New Zealand’s borders because it begs the question: How prevalent is the practice of winemakers sending a “special cuvee” — the wine from its best vineyard or best barrel, for example — to wine reviewers and wine competitions in hopes of bagging a high score or a gold medal, then bottling its similar-but-slightly-more-pedestrian wine for the unsuspecting public? I’m not suggesting it’s common. But I worry it might be happening more than we think.

Simply put, the credibility of the wine scores we read in Wine Spectator and the Wine Advocate and elsewhere relies on consumers’ belief that the wine in the bottle they buy in the corner wine shop is the same wine that scored the precious 90. If that belief is shaken, the scores become meaningless.

Some large wine publications solicit samples from wineries and award scores based solely on those samples. Others try to buy their wines in the marketplace, but still participate in large-scale tastings and events that unveil the new wines of the vintage, where some shenanigans could still take place.

So how often does this switcharoo occur, and what steps can wine magazine editors, newsletter authors and wine competition judges take to protect the integrity of their ratings and results?

This could get very interesting.

Thanks and cheers!

Mark Fisher

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