Wine Competition

Wines will be entered in different classes and categories by the wineries participating in the Budbreak Festival on Saturday. Only wines that will be available for tasting and sale on the day of the Budbreak Festival are eligible to be entered into the wine competition.  Competition wine will be shipped to Old North State Winery and stored in their barrel room until the day before the competition. The wine will then be transported to the Wine Judging Area by ONS personnel.  Volunteers will sort out the entries on Thursday and assign them an individual number and place them in a paper bag so the pouring and tasting will be anonymous.  The number that corresponds with each wine will be marked on the tasting glasses when they are poured. 

 There will be Four Teams of Judges led by an experienced Wine Judge. Each Team will be assigned a particular category of wine to judge, dry whites, dry reds, sweet whites and sweet reds. All wine will be placed in one of these categories. Each Team will start with the driest wine then taste to the sweetest in their category.  The area that the wines will be opened will be curtained off so the Judges will not be able to see the wines, which will be poured about 20 minutes before they are taken out to the Judges. After each bottle is opened a Moderator will smell the wine to ensure that it is not spoiled. If it is bad with an off or offensive  odor another bottle of the same wine will be opened. If it doesn’t get any better the best sample of the 3 bottles will be sent out to the Judges. No comments about the wine, good or bad will be vocalized by the volunteers that could be overheard by the Judges.

A small sample of each wine will be poured 20 minutes before presenting to the Judges in 4 glasses that will be marked with the corresponding number on the glass and a small bar napkin placed on the top of each glass.  The Judges will be informed of the Varietal or blend, place of origin or AVA, if other than NC, per cent of residual sugar by range and retail price. Relative scoring means Judges will consider all factors including the price when they develop their score for each wine.

No more than 4 wines will be presented to the Judges at a time to keep the aromas from interfering with each other. The Judging will start at noon and will take several hours. Volunteers will attend to the Judges and make sure they have everything they need and to take up the tabulation sheets. Each wine will receive a numerical grade from each Judge of up to 100 points. The Moderator will add all 4 scores together and divide by the number of Judges score sheets to obtain the average which will be the total score for the wine. Each Team Leader Judge and will work to develop a consensus for their Team and keep everyone on track. A Rotary Representative will be the Moderator and the final authority on any interpretations of the rules.

Each wine will be judged on its own merit and how it meets the requirements for the medals. Wines are not in competition with each other except for Best of the Show awards. Several Gold Medals could be awarded in the same category or none at all. The Gold Medal winners will be in competition for Best of the Show Red and Best of the Show White. A majority of the Judges must be in agreement for a wine to win a Best of the Show award. All of the Judges will taste all of the Gold Medal winners starting with the driest white working toward the sweetest red to eliminate the lowest scorers each time until a consensus is reached for Best of the Show Red and Best of Show White.

The Moderator will compile the Master Scoring Sheet which will list each wine and the total amount of points that have been awarded to the wine.  Medals will be awarded for each wine that receives more than 60 points based on the following score, less than 60 points no medal;

60 to 77      points   Bronze Medal

77.1 to 90   points   Silver  Medal

90.1 to 100 points   Gold Medal All Gold are then entered in the Best of Show Red or White award.