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2018 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition
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I am quite ambivalent about commercial wine competitions. In the best of circumstances they can be a bit of a crap shoot. You don't want to be the first wine that the judging panels samples (they aren't going to give a gold medal to the first wine they taste), and if you are in a really large category, like Chardonnay, where there might be 100 entries, you definitely don't want to be the last one judged (how do you still taste a wine after about 15 or 20?). That being said, they do have a utility. Commercial wine competitions are expensive to enter, so I don't generally enter very many wines, only the ones that I think will do very well, and allow me to gauge how my skills are developing. The California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition is the best known, the Orange County Fair competition is the largest, the San Francisco Chronicle is the most prestigious. Of the hundreds of wine competitions in America, these are the only three I enter regularly. The SF Chron is my favorite, mainly because they don't allow winemakers on the judging panels. This may seem counter-intuitive; it is not. Winemakers have a tendency to be myopic. They know what they do, they like what they do, their scope can be somewhat limited.
Chicago Park Wine Society 3nd Quarter Release |
This can be problematic when your focus is obscure varietals that many, if not most, California winemakers have never even heard of. Wine writers, bloggers, critics, sommeliers on the other hand, tend to have a much broader wine experience. For this reason, my wines always do better at competitions like the San Francisco Chronicle competition. Which seques me to the 2018 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition:
Montoliva 2015 Negroamaro - Silver Medal Montoliva 2015 Dolcetto - Double Gold Montoliva 2014 Aglianico - Best of Class I am particularly pleased with the Double Gold for our current Dolcetto. This is awarded when all five judges on the panel agree that the wine they are sampling is superior. Any idea how hard it is to get five wine critics to agree on anything?! Double Golds aren't awarded very often. I thought the Negroamaro deserved a better score, there's my ambivalence towards competitions. Sometimes you just can't account for taste. Cheers, Mark |
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It's Time to Throw Some Shrimp on the Barbie!
It's the biggest event we hold at Montoliva each year. It is the only event of the year where we do live music. And free food. I'm talking real food...not crackers. Shrimp skewers. Tri-tip. Sausages. Some veggies too, I suppose. Oh yeah, and this is also the time of year we release our new vintages of Mark's Magia, our classic Puglian blend of Primitivo and Negroamaro, and our Sinistra, our proprietary blend of Teroldego and Barbera. Best of All......it's all free to members of the Chicago Park Wine Society. Not a member yet? We can fix that right here. Adding some late breaking news here: our next vintage of Mark's Magia just won a Gold Medal at the Orange County Wine Competition (the largest commercial wine competition in California). |
What: Chicago Park Wine Society 3rd Quarter Release |
Saturday Night Movies in the VineyardA perennial favorite at Montoliva Vineyard & Winery
What do you get when you mix a warm foothill evening, wine, pizza and an outdoor movie? Montoliva Vineyard & Winery Saturday Night Movies in the Vineyard, of course. This is season...hmm, I think this might be our 10th year of showing movies in the vineyard. It has always been a pretty low keyed affair. Bring your lawn chair, beach blanket, and a mild sense of adventure. |
We provide a gorgeous setting, high quality 8ft x 10ft movie screen and state of the art sound, pizza from Main Street Pizza in Colfax, and of course, wine. As always we have certain themes. Our first movie of the year is always a Bogart movie. In mid-August, most years, we like to show a musical of some sort. Naturally, one or two movies related to wine. Toss in a personal favorite or three, and we've got a summer schedule! Gates open at 6:30pm, the pies are delivered around 7, the movie starts at dusk, around 8pm in mid-June. The cost is only $18 for a glass of wine and lots of pizza ($15 for members of the Chicago Park Wine Society). A bargain at twice the price. We even provide popcorn! |
Summer's Movie Night ScheduleJune 16th - Treasure of the Sierra Madre
June 30th - Blazing Saddles July 7th - Sideways July 21st - Robin Hood (the original one, with Errol Flynn) August 4th - Mama Mia! The Movie August 18th - My Cousin Vinny ~ our annual "Date Night" movie |
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