Joel Goldberg

Eat your heart out, John U. Bacon. While the football Wolverines plummet weakly toward the depths of the Big Ten, a very different Michigan eleven just beat up big time on its arch-rivals from Ohio.

This squad doesn’t strut its talents in the Big House or cavernous Crisler. Its slightly smaller – but decidedly more refined – field of combat lies a couple of miles north on Main Street, around a crystal-bedecked tasting table at Vinology Wine Bar.

Earlier this week, the second annual Ohio vs. Michigan Wine Clash turned into a rout, as eleven of Michigan’s finest wines drubbed a like number of Buckeyes during back-to-back judgings in both Ann Arbor and Columbus.

It wasn’t really a fair fight with the amazing red wines from Michigan’s 2007 vintage, the finest in the state’s history. The lopsided results: the best wine overall, and four of the top five, were proudly Wolverine – though Ohio provided the lone bargain among the bunch.

Wine Clash logo

The Clash is the brainchild of Ohioan Andrew Hall, and sponsored by Slow Food Columbus. The event was designed to promote “drink local” and coincide with the annual release of air-shipped French Beaujolais Nouveau and the UM-OSU football game – last year’s Chronicle article detailed its origins.

Last Sunday, I sat down with four other Michigan judges to taste from 22 bottles cloaked in brown paper bags – half from Michigan, half from Ohio. A few days earlier, a team of Ohio judges went through the same exercise in Columbus.

Our host, and one of the judges: Vinology owner Kristin Jonna. Other local tasters included Master Sommelier Claudia Tyagi, Rochester Hills collector Errol Kovitch, and Wyncroft Winery owner/winemaker Jim Lester.

(For an Ohio view of Clash results, see the article by Dayton Daily News wine writer Mark Fisher, who judged at the Columbus tasting.)

A word about prices: flying in the face of both recession and flagging market demand for ultra-premium wines, price tags among Michigan’s best producers have skyrocketed in the last couple of years. Top 2007 reds sell for $35 to $50, while medal-winning ice wines can fetch $60 to $90 – for a half-bottle.

As with limited-production wines elsewhere, these prices can reflect not only the very real quality inside the bottle and added costs of hand-crafting tiny batches – often under 100 cases – but also an indeterminate “scarcity value.”

So who came out on top at the Clash?

#1: MICHIGAN: 2007 “Winter Ice” – Longview Winery, Leelanau Peninsula. $60 (375 ml bottle)

The Clash’s top dog came from Longview Winery – located in the off-the-beaten-track Leelanau Peninsula town of Cedar – where owner Alan Eaker and consulting winemaker Shawn Walters teamed to create Michigan’s first-ever ice wine from the Cayuga grape, a hybrid developed at Cornell for its cold-weather hardiness.

Ice wine originates with ripe grapes left to hang on the vine and slowly desiccate, long past normal harvest season, when the leaves drop and the vine enters its winter hibernation. When nighttime temperatures hit the 15- to 20-degree range and freeze the grapes solid – think: small marbleized pellets – they’re picked and pressed while frozen, preferably at 6 a.m. on an absurdly cold December morning.

Wine Clash organizer Andrew Hall, behind a gaggle of paper-bagged wines. (Photo by the writer.)

In the interim, just about anything can go wrong. Grapes can turn moldy or otherwise rot on the vine, fall to the ground, or become the dish-of-the-day for birds and animals. Even when things go right, each pellet yields just a couple of drops of ultra-concentrated juice. That accounts for ice wine’s tiny quantities and typical stratospheric pricing.

But why Cayuga? Call it a leap of faith on Eaker’s part.

“I noticed it hangs well,” he told me. “The grapes don’t break down after the leaves come off the vine. And there’s a good acid-to-sugar balance. I felt I could gamble a row.”

So he left a single row of Cayuga vines unpicked – at the front of the vineyard, as he explained, “so I could take the snow blower and blow off the fruit.”

Eaker got that right. If your idea of ice wine revolves around thick syrup and an unadulterated sugar rush, get ready for a surprise. Cayuga grapes yield an ice wine that’s lighter in body and alcohol, with intense honeydew flavor and enough acidity to provide a mouth-puckering counterpoint to all that sweetness.

In addition to its Clash victory, Longview’s Winter Ice scored a double gold medal at last August’s Michigan Wine Competition. You’ll have to decide for yourself about the quality-to-price ratio: it’ll set you back $60 for a half-bottle, from the 65 cases produced.

#2: MICHIGAN: 2007 Reserve Cabernet Franc – 2 Lads Winery, Old Mission Peninsula. $40

2 Lads is Michigan’s hot winery du jour, with streams of tourists trekking north through Old Mission to its industrial-design facility overlooking the east arm of Grand Traverse Bay.

Winemaker Cornel Olivier calls Cab Franc his signature grape, and this marks the second time his flagship red played runner-up; it also nabbed second place, among 24 wines, at the Harding’s Cup Cabernet Franc Challenge last summer.

Be forewarned: this brooding, ultra-concentrated tannic beast isn’t your grandpa’s idea of Michigan red wine. But it is indicative of the best that the state produced in the unique 2007 vintage – especially if you give it license to improve in the cellar for up to a decade.

#3: OHIO: 2007 Cabernet Franc – Kinkead Ridge, Ohio River Valley. $18

The only repeat-winner winery in either state from last year’s Clash, Kinkead Ridge makes its home southeast of Cincinnati, near the Ohio River.

They scored this time with the lone under-$30 wine among the top five. It provides the yang to 2 Lads’ yin; instead of a hulking bottle to lay down for years, you’ll be hard-pressed to keep your hands off this, with a berry nose that jumps from the glass and silky, fruit-driven palate that seduces your taste buds with a serious “yum” factor.

Top 5 Wine Clash bottles. (Photo by Andrew Hall)

Co-owner and winemaker Ron Barrett – who formerly owned a winery in Oregon – explains his pricing as “part of our philosophy. Our whole objective is to show we can be competitive in the marketplace. If we priced higher, we’d still sell out – but at the same time we’d turn off some people to our wine.”

Unfortunately, you can’t find Kinkead Ridge in Michigan – and the winery doesn’t have a shipping license, since it sells almost exclusively through Ohio retailers. But the other co-owner, managing partner Nancy Bentley, says that if you email her she’ll try to get you a few bottles from the mere 40 cases that remain. At the price, it’s a steal.

#4: MICHIGAN: 2007 Cabernet Franc/Merlot, Gill’s Pier, Leelanau Peninsula. $35

No surprise in this top-five finish. Gill’s Pier, another out-of-the-way Leelanau winery just north of Leland, took home the Best Dry Red trophy at the Michigan Wine Competition with this wine, from grapes grown in its lakeside vineyard, adjacent to the winery.

Bryan Ulbrich, who makes wine for Gill’s Pier owners Kris and Ryan Sterkenburg, is better-known for the trophy-winning whites he’s crafted at Peninsula Cellars and his own Left Foot Charley. But this highly-extracted youthful red exudes blackcherry fruit and massive tannins in equal parts. Again, stash it away for several years for maximum enjoyment.

Michigan judges Kristin Jonna of Vinology and Jim Lester of Wyncroft Winery. (Photo by the writer.)

#5: MICHIGAN: 2007 Pinot Noir – Avonlea Vineyard, Wyncroft, Lake Michigan Shore. $45

Tiny, high-end Wyncroft Winery, from the equally small southwest Michigan town of Buchanan, makes wines more talked-about than tasted. With no retail distribution or on-site tasting room, you’ll find its wares only through its website and mailing list.

Don’t expect an ultra-ripe fruit-bomb; while Wyncroft is known for highly-concentrated wines, the style here is dark and focused, the Pinot fruit more like Burgundy than California. As with the 2 Lads, it’ll be lots better if you can put it away for a while.

Yes, Wyncroft’s Jim Lester was one of the Michigan judges. While it’s fair to presume that he recognized his own wine during the tasting – and may even have ranked it highly – all the other judges who put it in the top five tasted and scored it blind.

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Next month, the Vinous Posse will sniff, sip and spit its way through a roundup of bubblies from around the globe, designed not to bust your holiday budget. If we didn’t taste your favorite under-$25 sparkler in last year’s assortment but you think it coulda been a contender, let us know by email: bubbles@michwine.com.

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.

Joel Goldberg

Here’s a one-question pop quiz. The sticker on the bottle says the wine won a gold medal at a major competition. But one quick sip convinces you it’s the foulest plonk to cross your palate in weeks.

Your first reaction is:

     
A. “Who made this wine? I could make better wine than that!”
B. “Who bought this wine? I could pick out better wine than that!”
C. “Who gave this wine a gold medal? I could hand out awards better than that!”

Did you pick “C”? You may have a future as a wine judge. Read on …

Tuesday, August 4, marks the 32^nd Annual Michigan Wine Competition. Twenty-four judges will descend on East Lansing’s Kellogg Center to pass judgment on a record 390 Michigan wines from 42 wineries – everything from bone-dry sparklers to odd concoctions sporting names like “Cherry Port.”

(The Gold Medal Reception, open to the public and highly recommended, happens two days later; more information is on the Wine Council website.)

To most wine drinkers, the judging process carries the same level of opacity as the crafting of sausage or legislation. To wit: wines go in one end; medals come out the other.

So let’s Chronicle what goes on behind the screen. NOTE: This column doesn’t “report” a single wine competition, as a news story might, but takes some literary license to combine actual occurrences from multiple occasions and recreate approximate times, in order to convey the range and flavor of the judging experience. Photos are from the 2007 and 2008 Michigan Wine Competitions.

The paper "donuts" on the stems keep judges from confusing the wines.

7:00 a.m. Morning arrives too early in the Kellogg Center hotel room, its green-and-white-accented décor alien to the Ann Arbor psyche. I instantly regret my over-enthusiastic participation in last night’s festivities – i.e. the judges’ welcoming dinner.

8:05 a.m. Meander downstairs to the warren of seminar rooms occupied by the Michigan Wine Competition. Quickly pass by the staging area, where a half-dozen volunteers are organizing glasses and opening bottles for the morning tasting flights, sequestered from judges’ eyes.

First order of business: locate my name tag, judge’s packet, bagels and coffee. Not necessarily in that order.

Murmur hellos to other judges, few of whom move quickly or speak loudly this morning. Most are familiar, since competitions tend to recycle their judges, barring unavailability or significant faux pas committed the previous year.

A surprising number live or work around Ann Arbor, starting with Competition Superintendent Chris Cook, wine writer for Hour Detroit and frequent judge at competitions nationwide. His job today: think fast on his feet, lubricate problems, keep things moving.

Other locals on the panel: David Creighton, late wine writer for the late Ann Arbor News; Kristin Jonna of Vinology; Village Corner proprietor Dick Scheer; Ron Sober, veteran judge and new wine blogger for AnnArbor.com; and Chaad Thomas, former Paesano’s wine guy, now co-owner of Ann Arbor-based US Imports.

A handful of heavy-hitter out-of-state judges – like Californians Scott Harvey (winemaker) and Dan Berger (writer) – cycle semi-regularly through Michigan’s judging ranks. This helps to build nationwide street cred for the state’s wines.

Master Sommelier Madeline Triffon judges some wine.

8:23 a.m. Grab one of four chairs at Table 6, where I’ve been assigned to judge. Open the packet and look through our tasting agenda.

In general, competitions taste bubblies first, followed by whites, reds, fruit and dessert wines. Each table evaluates different categories; while we’re busy with Pinot Grigio, the next table over may be slogging through Chardonnay.

Good news – our first flight is dry sparkling wines! If you must taste wine at 8:30 in the morning, bubbly is the best way to ease in gently.

8:25 a.m. The other Table 6 judges wander over; handshakes all around. Our table head is Master Sommelier Madeline Triffon, who runs wine for the Detroit-area Matt Prentice Restaurant Group. Master Sommeliers are rock stars of the wine world, and Madeline is a headliner: the first woman to receive her M.S. in America and past head of the Court of Master Sommeliers.

Beyond that, our table has a typical mix of judges: one guy works for a wine distributor, a second teaches winemaking at an out-of-state university. I write about wine.

8:33 a.m. Chris Cook welcomes the judges and talks about the competition format.

In the past, some have grumbled about the high percentage of medals handed out; last year, 73% of the wines entered went home with one color of metal or another. For 2009, they’ll eliminate “Honorable Mention” and tighten the criteria for bronze medals, which they hope will rein in the count.

We’re ready to judge.

8:47 a.m. Five flutes of sparkling wine arrive in front of each judge at Table 6. Numbered paper doughnuts circle the stems so we can’t mix them up.

Chris Cook lifting a bottle of wine out of a bucket.

We’ll taste everything blind. Other than the category – “Brut Sparkling” – and the vintage (all but one in this flight are “Non-vintage”) our judging sheets provide no clue about what’s in the glasses set before us.

Quiet descends on the room as 24 judges start to swirl, sniff and sip. An opaque cup resides on the right, to receive our oral deposits after each taste; spitting is mandatory if we hope to survive the day. Most of us take notes that we can match to unmasked wines later in the day.

8:59 a.m. Madeline asks, “Everyone done?” and starts to poll Table 6 for verdicts on the first flight. Each of us is expected to say one of four things: Gold, Silver, Bronze, or No Medal. If everyone concurs, we’re on to the next wine. If just one judge dissents, the majority rules unless the outlier wants to argue a case to the group. Social norms and time pressures make that unusual.

Our judgments on wine #1: Gold, Silver, Silver, Gold. The day’s first deadlock.

Here’s where the table head’s diplomatic skills come into play. Madeline needs to wheedle consensus out of four opinionated tasters, each of whom secretly believes he or she has the best palate at the table, without provoking irritation that could play havoc with our ability to work together the remainder of the day.

We take two minutes to discuss what we like – or don’t – about the bubbly, tossing around wine-geek terms like toast, biscuit, and residual sugar. One Silver switches to Gold, leaving me as the lone dissenter.

I toss in the towel. I won’t object to the table awarding Gold. But I won’t switch to make the vote unanimous, either. That would give the wine a rare Double Gold medal – an honor of which it isn’t worthy.

9:16 a.m. Through with the bubblies! We medal all five wines; in addition to the first Gold, we’ve handed out two Silver and two Bronze. Servers clear the table of flutes.

I frequently vote one rank lower than other judges. For two years, I’ve been among the lobbyists to reduce the medal count. In practice, that means eliminating a high percentage of current Bronze medalists and lowering many Silvers to Bronze.

9:21 a.m. Flight two arrives: Dry Riesling. After a quick conference, our table agrees to tackle the entire group of 13 wines at one go, rather then splitting it into two separate batches.

Thirteen tasting glasses move from rolling carts to the space in front of each of us, piled two rows deep. The table takes on the look of a glass factory gone wrong.

Tasting this many wines simultaneously represents a trade-off. On the positive side, we can sample the full range before awarding medals to any of them.

On the downside, it’s nearly impossible to retain a palate memory of each wine as you move through an assemblage of this size, even with serious note taking. At least I can’t do it; Robert Parker might be able to. So I’m constantly back-tasting samples I’ve already tried to re-check my remembery.

It also doesn’t help that young Riesling changes rapidly as it sits in the glass, even over short periods. So the first wine I sample tastes totally different when I return to it 10 minutes later.

10:17 a.m. We’re done, but what a marathon. The sentiment will fade, but at the moment if I never taste another Riesling, it will be too soon.

First thoughts: the much-hyped 2007 vintage proves to be as strong as anticipated. That unusually warm and ripe year gave birth to 11 of the 13 Rieslings we tasted; three of them got Gold medals, though again no Double Gold. Overall, 11 out of 13 wines medaled. That’s not surprising; Riesling is one of Michigan’s stronger grapes.

Time for the servers to clear the battlefield.

10:25 a.m. Now up: six wines classified as “Proprietary Dry White,” a catchall for winemaker-concocted multi-grape blends. Entries vary wildly; some seem little more than thrown-together small lots and leftovers; others appear seriously assembled to complement each grape’s qualities.

But we don’t fall in love with any of them; the worst elicit notes like “clumsy” and “swamp water.” We eventually medal three of the six: two Silver, one Bronze. I concur with both Silvers, but would have skipped the Bronze.

10:53 a.m. Finally – red wine! More specifically, nine glasses of Cabernet Franc from 2006 and 2007.

Setting up the battlefield.

Vintage variation tells the story here. Unlike 2007’s ripeness, 2006 was a “difficult” year for Michigan reds. (That’s winespeak for “The weather really sucked.”) A cool summer and early fall kept most red grapes from full maturity. The result? Mostly light-colored wines with low fruit concentration, high acidity and lean, unripe flavors.

In theory, competition judges aren’t supposed to compare wines in a flight. Each should earn a medal, or not, based on its own merits relative to a quality scale that resides in the judge’s brain.

Sometimes that’s difficult to put into practice. The 2006 Cab Francs in this flight fare poorly next to their riper, more concentrated 2007 siblings. Among the six 2006 Cab Francs, we award just one Silver and one Bronze.

But 2007 is a different story. This highly-anticipated red vintage has just three samples in our flight, released with little or no oak aging. We quickly award one Gold and two Silvers, with no significant disagreement – and the judges’ conversation centers on forthcoming wines from the vintage.

11:30 a.m. Everyone’s excited; it’s time for the first sweepstakes of the day: Dry White.

“Sweepstakes” determine the Best of Class trophy winners. Since Michigan doesn’t award a Best of Show, the competition’s highest prizes are at stake.

The concept sounds simple, but the logistics are daunting. Every Gold medal winner earns a spot in its class’s sweepstakes. Each judge tastes each wine, and votes for Best in Class. The top vote-getter wins.

But in the backroom, pressure is building. Staff and volunteers must quickly identify all Gold medal winners and print tasting sheets listing them for the judges to use, locate the extra bottles of each reserved for this purpose, pour samples for each judge, and distribute them to the tables.

The Dry White sweepstakes takes a nerve-wracking turn after judges vote a bumper crop of 17 Gold medals, all but three from 2007. That means 408 glasses need to be poured and labeled, and 17 delivered to each of the 24 judges.

One Gold-winning Rosé slips in among the whites, because Michigan doesn’t produce enough Rosé to warrant a separate Best of Class trophy. We can’t vote it the “Best White” trophy, but Chris Cook explains that if it receives enough votes, it will be eligible for the discretionary “Judges’ Merit Award.” It does.

We each taste our 17 wines, and we’re ready to vote. No discussion, no hair-splitting over medals.

Judges with more than one top pick can cast multiple votes, but the list stratifies quickly; over half the wines receive three or fewer votes. The winner: a Riesling originally judged at our table. Later in the day, we’ll find out it’s the 2007 Chateau Fontaine Dry Riesling, from Leelanau Peninsula.

12:11 p.m. Not a bad morning’s work: Table 6 tasted 50 wines, handed out five Gold medals, and joined with the other judges to select a Riesling as the competition’s “Best Dry White.” And all the judges are still speaking with one another.

After booting up the laptop for a quick update to the live-from-the-competition blog on MichWine, it’s off to lunch in the Kellogg Center’s State Room. No one seems very interested in a glass of wine with the meal.

After lunch: Table 6 judges flights of Traminette, semi-dry Pinot Grigio, semi-dry Whites, and fruit wines. A raspberry dessert wine from the final group gets the only Double Gold medal we hand out during the entire competition.

Palates start to fatigue. After 75 wines, I’m unable to identify subtleties that might have jumped out at 10 this morning.

Robert Parker, at his peak, was reputed to be able to taste and evaluate 200 hefty red wines in a day. I am clearly not, nor will ever be, Robert Parker.

Excellent logic exists behind the standard procedure of tasting lighter, drier wines early in the day, and saving in-your-face dessert and fruit wines for last.

We finish sweepstakes judging for the remaining classes. Luckily, none has more than nine Gold medalists to choose among.

Ructions ensue when the judges, led by Kristin Jonna, rebel and refuse to pick a Best of Class Sparkling Wine from among the three possibilities, deciding that none of the Gold medalists deserves the honor.

We vote the Judges’ Merit Award to the Rosé we tasted earlier, which turns out to be 2007 Pinot Noir Rosé from Bowers Harbor, on Old Mission Peninsula.

Things wrap up at 3 p.m. Just a few minutes later, we’re the first people in the state to learn which wines we’ve just judged as Michigan’s best.

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month. Listen online to Joel’s recent interview with Lucy Ann Lance.