Thomas DeVillers
See, swirl, sniff, sip, swish and spit: Tasting and evaluating wine is a multi-step process. Allison Geyer, left, judges.
Taking a morning off work to sip wine sounds like the height of luxury and relaxation — or perhaps a path to delinquency and unemployment. But not today. I’m sitting down with a group of sommeliers, wine sellers and writers who have been asked to judge the 2018 Wine is Wisconsin competition at UW-Madison.
Our task is to crown the best wine in the state, and we’ll be blind-tasting more than five dozen varieties from 13 different Wisconsin wineries. The rules are simple, but strict: All submissions must have at least 75 percent of ingredients sourced from within the state. To win top honors the wine must be made with 100 percent Wisconsin grapes. Familiar grapes like Merlot or Chardonnay have no place here (although a rogue bit of Pinot Noir managed to sneak in). Instead, the focus is on rising stars like Marquette, Frontenac, Petite Pearl, St. Pepin and La Crescent — all relatively new, hybrid grapes specially created to thrive in cold climates. It’s an audit of our local terroir.
The second-annual event is organized by the UW-Madison Department of Food Science. Enologist and outreach specialist Nick Smith is running the show with help from the Wisconsin Vintners Association, a Milwaukee-based organization for winemakers and enthusiasts that provided volunteers to serve as wine stewards for the competition. They’re busy backstage opening bottles, pouring flights and making sure that the nearly 500 glasses of wine are properly labeled before they’re delivered to the judges.
Smith greets the judges and introduces the first pour. “This is a calibration wine,” Smith explains as the stewards distribute tiny glasses of light golden liquid. A crisp, semi-sweet white blend made from donated Wisconsin grapes by UW-Madison students in collaboration with Wollersheim Winery. It’s meant to be a palate cleanser, but the judges are impressed. “I hope the rest are this good,” one says.
Judges are instructed to evaluate by assigning numerical scores for appearance, aroma and bouquet (shockingly, these two are not the same thing), taste, finish and overall impression. There’s also a separate scoresheet in the unfortunate event that a wine is GRAY. “That stands for generally regarded as yucky,” Smith says to laughter. Certainly taste is subjective, but there are several ways to ruin wine. About one in 20 bottles is infected with cork taint, or corked, which gives off a smell of moldy newspaper. Too much oxygen can cause a wine’s color to lessen and make the aromas and flavors disappear. A type of yeast called brettanomyces — aka “brett” — can, if present in large amounts, impart the unmistakable aromas of Band-Aids, barnyards or sweaty socks.
After the calibration wine, the tasting begins in earnest. First are the white wines, then the rosés and the blush wines, then reds and red blends, dessert wines, ice wines, meads and a novelty category that includes root beer wine and orange creamsicle wine.
There’s a misconception that all Wisconsin wines are sweet — and some definitely are — but many on display here are surprisingly well-balanced and showcase an abundance of complex flavors. I tasted lovely things — pineapple, apricot, ripe raspberry, stone fruit, even bubble gum. Other flavors were less lovely — acetone, vinegar, burnt rubber, a pile of oak chips, a water bottle left in a hot car. Worst of all, urinal cake. Truly, these wines contain multitudes.
It’s undeniably fun — and fascinating — to evaluate dozens of wines at once. With an entire flight lined up in front of you, it’s possible to observe the minute variations in color and clarity and how the liquid clings to the glass. Wines that smell and taste a certain way on the first pass are completely different when you revisit them.
Wisconsin may never be able to produce something like a massive California Cabernet — although breeders are constantly working on improving varieties and creating grapes that could go in that direction. But while big, tannic reds are popular, those aren’t the only wines worth drinking. “There’s a whole world of wine out there,” Smith says. “Diversity is important for wine offerings. And if you’re a little bit more adventurous, more exploratory, you’ll find something out there that you’ll love.”
Number of wines: 63
Number of wineries: 13
Grape varietals: Marquette, Petite Pearl, La Crescent, St. Pepin, Frontenac
Awards: 2 Double Gold, 5 Gold, 29 Silver, 18 Bronze
Best Wine of Wisconsin: Parallel 44 Vineyard and Winery 2016 Ice Wine
