Top-quality wine defined by structure

Balance, intensity and complexity eminently objective and measurable

August is a critical tasting time as the Six Nations Wine Challenge in Sydney, Australia, follows the annual InterVin International Wine Awards in Niagara-on-theLake, Ont. The back-to-back competitions offer an unrivalled insight into what’s available to consumers here in Canada and around the world.

The exhaustive two-week span means I’m exposed to hundreds of bottles each day and get a serious overview of what the latest trends are and how various wine styles are evolving.

For the past nine years, InterVin has been a showcase of the best wines available to Canadian consumers from various wine producing countries around the world. This year’s competition saw some 1,200 wines from 15 countries strive to receive top scores from the assembled judging panels, featuring a winemaker, sommelier and member of the wine media or educator.

The Six Nations Wine Challenge, commonly referred to as the New World Wine Challenge, sees 100 wines I nominate from Canadian wineries square off against specially selected samples from Australia, Chile, South Africa, New Zealand and the United States. The wines are tasted over the course of three days, which means mammoth tastings of 200 or more wines each day to identify the top scoring wines across 17 different categories.

In both cases, the results are kept under wraps until October. However, you can be sure that noteworthy wines available for purchase will be publicized in the weeks to come.

A common criticism of wine tasting and competitions is that such exercises are inherently subjective. That the sometimes flowery and poetic aroma and flavour descriptors used to describe how one wine tastes versus another is strictly a matter of personal experience and sensitivity.

That’s actually not the case. The factors that identify truly exceptional wines are best conveyed through documenting its structure.

Experts are taught to look for balance, length, intensity and complexity, which are eminently objective and measurable traits that define high-quality wines.

These criteria have nothing to do with fanciful tasting notes that document exotic fruit, animal, vegetable and mineral notes.

Instead, they distinctly measure the acid, sugar, body, alcohol and tannin of individual wines to express whether or not the wine’s quality is average or exceptional.