A mixed Hungarian and international crowd of wine enthusiasts recently enjoyed getting a taste of what it’s like to be a wine judge at an exciting joint event hosted by the VinAgora International Wine Competition and the CultiVini Wine Gallery. Two groups of guest tasters sampled seven wines blind and evaluated them alongside five experienced wine professionals, including myself, using VinaGora’s computerised evaluation system, which is based on the OIV’s 100-point system. The event was held at CultiVini (Párizsi utca 4, District V) on February 20.
The system directs tasters to a score by evaluating the wine according to the classic indicators of appearance, nose and palate, with factors such as intensity, uniqueness, body and length taken into consideration, with more points weighted towards quality on the nose and most of all on the palate. The emphasis on quality allows judges some leeway to bump up the score should they really like the wine even if it lacks somewhat in terms of intensity or body, for example. Indeed, a lighter and more subtle wine can still be of high quality.
VinaGora’s Gábor Antal noted that the range of scores of the participants initially varied considerably from the average but as the tasting went on they became much closer to those of the professional panel. He was also impressed by the enthusiasm of the tasters and welcomed their many intelligent questions.
Dóra Horváth and David Petersson tied for first place, with Csilla Finta claiming the third position. “It was a great experience to participate, it was a very good idea to organise such an event,” said Horváth. She also praised the CultiVini Wine Gallery for providing a high standard venue and excellent staff. Indeed, state-of-the-art CultiVini with its cutting-edge wine dispensing machines, which the participants sampled wines from after the tasting, provided the ideal backdrop for the high tech tasting. The dispensers were specially stocked for the occasion with 15 wines that had won gold and silver medals at VinaGora. “It was a very good experience to gain insight into an international wine competition and to also test ourselves as merely wine lovers as wine is only our hobby. I think this contest is a great initiative,” said Finta.
All three winners gain free entry to the VinaGora Wine Gala on June 25, which will be held at the New York Palace’s Boscolo Conference Centre. The first two are invited to attend the 2016 edition of VinaGora as observers. The actual judging will take place in Balatonfüred between June 10-13, which will also provide judges – many of whom come from abroad – the opportunity to soak up Balaton’s buzzing wine scene.
The first wine which was used for standardisation purposes was Rocinante Chardonnay 2013 from Villány’s Rejiji, which is the winery of the Finnish/Hungarian husband and wife team who own CultiVini. Both it and Rejiji’s red, Hanging Hill Cabernet Sauvignon 2012, which was used for standardising the reds, scored high enough to suggest they might enter their wines into the competition in future. The highest score went to Bock Cuvée 2011, which was given a full 100 points by one taster because it “had everything that I like and was faultless”. However, this taster’s points were discarded as are all wines that are more than five points away from the average. However, it still managed to secure a ‘Grand Gold’ in that panel with an average of 92 points.
