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You be the Judge
by Erl Happ
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Get comfy before you make your assessment. (Some wine is good for the clay)
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I sometimes put forward the notion that Western Australians shouldn't need an interstate or overseas personality to tell them whether their home grown product is good or not. Ordinary people can do that. We bring to the judging process a certain level of drinking experience. We may not always have a close acquaintance with the world’s best wines, but, faced with a line up of wines, our sense of smell and taste enables us to rank any given wine within a group.
Certain safeguards would have to be in place. You couldn't mix the sweet wines in with the dry. The wines would have to be small in number, not the 150 wines one sees in some capital city wine shows. Perhaps fifteen wines could be looked at prior to and during a meal. It would be a slower process, with heats and finals and no single judge would see all of the wines. However, it would pay dividends in terms of self-reliance, what we would learn, and what we would gain from an involved public. It would be a tremendous way to build a local market. Australians love sporting events, food and drink and a good time. Somebody could run a book on the event and there should be a decent stake for the winner e.g. a chocolate frog. The publicity would of course help to sell more wine, a lot would be drunk in the process, paid for of course by the willing judges. The restaurants where all the heats would be held should be ecstatic. I can imagine this happening in every minor and major wine region. Democracy at work. Healthy work.
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