2010 SF Chronicle Wine Competition

The results are in...

Clary Ranch's 2006 Syrah won the Judges' Choice Award, and the 2006 Pinot Noir won a Gold Medal. Please allow me to burst out in a self-congratulatory exclamation: WOO-HOO!!!

How do wines "compete", anyway? From tasting to tasting, wines are judged differently, by different judges, under different circumstances. Don't get me wrong: I am very pleased with the results. It is one more grain of sand... Okay, maybe a pebble... on the Public Relations Scale. It puts a little more weight behind Clary Ranch.

As the wines "win" more races, the stakes become higher. A "loss" weighs more heavily against a favored entry. The dark horse can come in with little to lose, and everything to gain. And in the final stretch - Okay, enough with the horse racing metaphor...

You've heard it before: buy the wines that taste good to you. Hopefully, the publicity will encourage more people to ask for my wines. (They're doing well in SoCal of late. I'll be making an appearance at a Pinot festival down in Pasadena at the end of this month.) The results of the San Francisco Chronicle Competition mean that I'll be pouring at Fort Mason in San Francisco on February 20th. More later...