The Wine Knows

During our judging Saturday of 116 Pacific Northwest Rieslings, we had just one corked wine. In fact, the far bigger problem was oxidation.

One might see this as a good trend that we found just one wine infected with TCA, the compound that makes a wine smell like a wet dog sleeping on rotting cardboard in a musty basement.

On Sunday, I posted an item about Ste. Michelle's 07 Dry Riesling winning best white wine at the annual Riverside International Wine Competition, run by Dan Berger, an international wine judge, writer, author and columnist for Wine Press Northwest.

Ste. Michelle wasn't the only Northwest winery to do well amid the 2,500 entries.

Chateau Ste. Michelle not only makes the most Riesling in the world - but it also produces some of the finest. This was proven once again this afternoon in Southern California.

Ste. Michelle's 2007 Dry Riesling won the sweepstakes award for best white wine of the Riverside International Wine Competition, which concluded this afternoon.

For the second consecutive year, a wine from British Columbia has won best of show at the annual Northwest Wine Summit. This year, however, the victorious wine was more "traditional."

The winner was Mission Hill Family Estate for its 2006 Select Lot Collection Riesling Icewine.

We're wrapping up the superlative rounds for the massive Northwest Wine Summit competition at Timberline Lodge on Oregon's Mount Hood.

Some 20 judges have been tasting through more than 1,150 wines since Sunday afternoon. This is, by far, the largest and most important wine competition in the Pacific Northwest.

The Wine Press Northwest crew is up on Mount Hood for the annual Northwest Wine Summit, the largest judging of Pacific Northwest wines.

This year, we have nearly 1,200 entries, a big increase over last year's 1,060. Judges the South and Pacific Northwest began judging after lunch today and will continue through Tuesday afternoon.

At Saturday night's Capital Food & Wine Fest* in Lacey, Wash., Walter Dacon Wines of nearby Shelton won best in show for its 2006 C'est Syrah Beaux.

This is no fluke.

Tom Wark over on Fermentation does an occasional post interviewing various wine bloggers. He asks the same questions to each blogger, so it's interesting to see their answers ("Prius or BMW?" "Chablis or California Chardonnay?").

One question whose answer interests me is, "Do you accept samples for review?" Many bloggers do not, it appears, but that's because they might have special interests and do not review wines.

Today, we concluded our judging of Pinot Noirs. We tasted through 133 Pinots from Oregon, Washington and Idaho. We plan to do a separate tasting of B.C. Pinots in the Okanagan, as it is nearly impossible to get samples across the border anymore.

Wine Press Northwest is tasting 133 Northwest Pinot Noirs today and Saturday. In the magazine's 10-year history, this is our third "big Pinot tasting" - and some of these Pinots are big.

Said one judge after the second flight: "Some of these folks sure aren't shy with the alcohols."