Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/23459
FROM THE EDITOR ers; in fact, I fi nd them a rather pleasant lot. The problem is—or was, at that time—that many of them were cellar blind. What do I mean by “cellar blind”? Simply that they tasted their own wines—the wines they made—to the exclusion of virtually all others. The result of this is that the only wines that seemed correct to them were their own wines. Other wines, made by other people, deviated from this norm and were thus downgraded when judged. In today’s competitive wine market, winemakers need to be familiar with the wines made by their neighbors, as well as iconic wines made in other parts of the world. If I were a Cabernet maker in, say, Coonawarra, every now and then I would drink some good Bordeaux and/or some respected Napa Cabernet. It would be a necessary method of checking myself and observing how my wines stack up. Most American vintners seem to have learned this lesson. I’ve been reviewing wines for a number of years, and I can defi nitely see a dramatic improvement in Are You W the overall quality of the domestic wines that I am tasting. There are many fewer fl awed or misguided wines than there used to be. Apparently, this is not always true of wines from some other parts of the world. When a signifi cant number of wines from the same region suffer from a common fl aw, it indicates to me that the winemakers there have a classic case of cellar blindness. I have had many world-class wines from Chile, but there are a signifi cant number of wines from that country that suffer from an excess of herbaceous- ness. This is a characteristic that can be minimized through vineyard manage- ment. The problem is that if you only taste your own wines you are likely to accept that vegetal character as a normal—maybe even desirable—trait. I have had many world-class wines from the Southern Rhône and South Africa, but there are a signifi cant number of wines from those regions that suffer from brettanomyces, an earthy, barnyard-y yeast spoilage. If all the wines you taste have this condition, you are more likely to accept it as the norm. Wine is in a golden age right now; the quality of wines from all over the world is the best it’s ever been. This means more good wines are competing for consumer dollars (or euros, or yuan). In such a highly competitive envi- ronment, a case of cellar blindness can be a real game changer. Cellar Blind? hen I took over the San Francisco Wine Competition more than 20 years ago, my fi rst offi cial act was to politely dismiss all the judges who were winemakers. I don’t have anything against winemak- 4 / the tasting panel / january–february 201 1 PHOTO: CATHY TWIGG-BLUMEL