San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Welcome to the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition
For the past 21 years, the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition has been devoted to wine — from what is in the bottles to the people and places behind those bottles.
This year alone, we had entries from across North America, including from over 30 states and the country of Mexico, and our judges scrutinized nearly 5,700 wines, ranging from light and fragrant to rich and powerful.
Our intention has been to bring international attention to the complex flavors and regional distinctions that are created from grapes grown in a diversity of viticulture areas in North America. The people who make it are artisans who balance advanced technological tools with traditional approaches.
Over the past two decades, the competition has grown to become one of the world’s most respected and highly publicized. It has established itself as a platform for large and boutique wineries alike to showcase their wines on a national scale and increase sales.
While the competition will not be able to host the Public Tasting this year due to COVID19, there is still much to celebrate. This year’s section focuses on the wide variety of winners, both nationally and internationally. In 2019, the competition coordinators went on a trip to Baja California, Mexico to increase entries from the region and we talk with L.A. Cetto, one of the winners this year from Mexico. See W17 for the full story.
In the U.S., the competition has also been a pioneer for women parity on professional judging panels. We talk with four judges about their experiences on W10.
We believe that this competition is a true barometer that consumers can use to educate themselves and measure premium wines. All awards are listed on the competition website at www.winejudging.com.
The past year has not been an easy one for the North American wine industry, as wineries have struggled to stay afloat while pandemic safety measures have forced many of their sales channels, like tasting rooms and restaurants, to shutter. That context is part of what made the 2021 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition so poignant, as a chance to validate some of the worldclass bottles that wineries from California to Maine are continuing to produce.
Fifty judges gathered together — masked and distanced — to taste and evaluate nearly 5,700 wines over a week in March. Although there were no judges’ parties or dinners this year, it was nevertheless an eventful week. Wines from all over the U.S. and Mexico, not just California, showed well, and on page W7 writer Carey Sweet highlights a few of the top performers from states like Tennessee and Michigan. The competition’s top sparklingwine honor, in fact, went to a bottle from New Mexico.
The week was also a reminder of how far women have come in the wine industry. Women have long been underrepresented among wine competition judges, a reflection of the larger industry’s inequities, and on page W10 Sweet looks at some of the SFCWC’s female judges who have broken barriers.
Every year we look forward to the public tasting of the SFCWC’s top award winners at Fort Mason, but that’s been canceled this year due to the pandemic. In its place, I’ll be hosting a virtual event on April 15 in which we’ll taste through some of my favorite wines from the 2021 competition, with special guest appearances from the winemakers who made them. You can learn more about that event on page 21 or at sfchronicle.com/membership.
We’ll see you at Fort Mason next year. Cheers!