The Australian show judging system can take a lot of credit for the improvement in quality of our wines. Shows also play a major role in marketing as wines that win medals are often easier to sell. For thoughts on what show medals mean please go to What do Show Medals Mean - Part 1 and Part 2. They are as popular as ever with for example the recently judged Royal Adelaide Show having 2,946 entries. So they are going to be with us for a long time to come.

No one is completely happy with the judging system and it is constantly being tweaked to keep it relevant. A winemaker was recently telling me that judging goes through cycles so that the flavour added by a particular type of yeast may be favoured for a few years and then fall out of favour. Certainly to grab a medal the wine must stand out in the crowd, so many good wines are overlooked.

Another offered the view that specialty judges should be appointed for certain varieties. This idea is a good one as I have always felt that a winemaker who has specialised in a particular variety must know more about what the variety is capable of than a winemaker judge who has only scant knowledge of the variety. Who would be better at judging sauvignon blanc than New Zealand judges or for Barossa semillon than someone like Christa Binder-Deans who has made this variety her passion?

An area though that has not received much attention would suggest that judging is doomed to be hopelessly biased. The human genome study shows us that about 1000 genes are set aside to detect aroma. Many of these have been turned off and I recently read that only 324 are still active. Some thoughts on tasting can be found at What You Bring to Your First Wine Tasting.

Now the problem is that what is turned off for me may not be turned off for you and also we all have different detection levels for some compounds. This would suggest that some judges will be good in some areas and no good in others. Our palates do very little as a mere 40 odd genes are all we have to taste with and you can bet we are all different in this area as well.

Currently the judging system is a single ladder system. You start at the bottom and with diligence and hard work you can climb to the top. But if we differ widely in which chemical compounds we respond to we may not be promoting a wide enough variety of talent. Judges themselves are aware for example that some are good at detecting V.A. or sulphur while others may have much lower detection levels. One judge’s fault is another’s good drink.

So we should view the system as multiple ladders that must be climbed and on some you may not get beyond the first rung because your genes will not allow it. This topic that perhaps seems obscure today will have a spotlight shone on it over the next decade.

We cover many topics about tasting in our 'On Tasting' section.