You wouldn’t turn your back on a million dollars, would you? Even if you didn’t think you’d really earned it. A million dollars is a million dollars. Although I doubt its impact is quite that much these days, throughout the 1980s it was accepted in the wine trade that to win the Jimmy Watson Trophy at the Melbourne Wine Show was worth about a million. No wonder it’s keenly contested. “But there’s a double perception about trophies”, says Len Evans OBE, Australia’s most vocal and authoritative protagonist of the wine show system, Chairman of the Royal Sydney Show since 1978 and former Chairman of Judges of the Royal Adelaide and the National (Canberra) Wine Shows. “To the marketers and the public the Watson is clearly the most important, although I doubt the wine makers agree”. So, which are the trophies the wine makers really want to win? Trophy-wining wines must first have won a gold medal. That’s the hard bit, says Robin Day, Chief Winemaker at Orlando. The next step requires more luck than anything else, he postulates. “Sometimes a wine will get up to win a gold and then bowl over a whole row of skittles and win five trophies.” That’s how reputations are not only cemented but immortalised. There’s no doubt that trophies pack more punch than gold medals do. “Medals tend to lose their meaning when you have to show the class number and year with the medal won on a wine label”, says Ian McKenzie, Chief Winemaker at Seppelt. “They signify nothing to the consumer, let alone the winemaker. Hence the importance of trophies.” I agree with McKenzie, but admit to great surprise when informed that there are only about a third of the gold medals awarded in major wine shows today than there were ten years ago, although the number of exhibits has increased dramatically. “It’s much more difficult to win golds”, says Robin Day, “especially since certain shows exclude wines yet to be bottled. People should be aware that a wine cannot be shown as many times today as it might have been before.” There’s no doubt that certain trophies have the potential to bring huge financial rewards, provided their winners have the stock in hand and publicity resources to capitalise on them. All to frequently, as many wine companies would agree, there’s not enough of the actual winning wine to go around. Len Evans’ own company of Rothbury Estate won the Bert Bear Trophy for the Best White Varietal Wine at last year’s Sydney Show with its 1992 Barrel Fermented Chardonnay. Evans bemoans the fact that as a result he could have placed orders for three times its production of 3,500 cases. “But the win was huge for Rothbury. That trophy will help to establish the wine’s lineage”, he says. Certain wineries attempt to stretch a trophy’s aura over other wines in their portfolio, listing on all their labels their entire history of major show successes. The average punter could well be forgiven for thinking the honours list was in fact won by the wine on whose label they were displayed. And remember the Mildara fiasco? A sister wine that did NOT win the Jimmy Watson Trophy was labelled “J.W. Classic”. Marketing blunder, exploitation or just simple (and naive) honesty? At least the stunt hasn’t been attempted since. Most winemakers want the trophies which bring recognition amongst their peers, although as Robin Day concedes, all trophies are sought after to some degree. “The most valuable trophy is the one you won last.” Generally speaking, winemakers dream of those trophies which proclaim their wine to be the most outstanding in a clearly-defined style or varietal category. David Lance, wine maker of the Yarra Valley’s Diamond Valley Vineyards, knows the feeling well. “If I could pick a single trophy”, he says, “it would be for the best pinot noir varietal at the Canberra Show (which Lance has collected an amazing four times and is now called the Canberra Wine Press Club Trophy).” Most winemakers agree with Geoff Weaver, former Hardys Chief Winemaker and now owner-maker of Stafford Ridge, that the tighter and more specific the requirements of the trophy, the less significance it has to them. “The best wine of the show – white, red or whatever – is the one to win”, echoes Ian McKenzie. Whether or not there’s much cache attached to the Best Exhibitor Trophies depends largely on whom you work for. These are awarded to a company based on an aggregate of scores across all classes in major shows. They naturally favour the big companies able to enter many more wines and which are also able to make multiple entries in single classes by using different brand names. The big brands have always held back wines from sale to dominate show classes in which older vintages tend to win, and as one senior winemaker points out, “If you’ve been there and done that, it’s no real use. Seppelts (which in the ’80s dominated these trophies) saw they were no use and now Lindemans are finding they’re no use. There’s not the interest of 20 years ago in these awards, for if there was, more of us would try to win them.” Penfolds’ Chief Winemaker is John Duval. He still manages a genuine smile each time he collects another trophy. “Although it’s good to win the trophies that bring the p.r. mileage”, he says, “the ‘Best Exhibitor’ trophies are the greatest accolade as far as I’m concerned. They cover wines across a wide range of styles and ages and mean much more than those for the best one year-old wine, or the best example of a current vintage.” But should wines be held back especially to win them? “That’s an individual company decision,” says Duval. “Lindemans (a Penfolds subsidiary) is presently maintaining the effort to support the consumers’ view of the brand.” Since its entrants must all have won medals elsewhere before acceptance, David Lance and most other winemakers regard the Canberra show most highly. “It’s where the best of the best compete”, he says. And almost universally, Sydney and Adelaide are seen as the other two prestige shows, streets ahead of the others. “Since the Adelaide, Canberra and Sydney shows are better run, their medals should be lot more highly regarded than those of other wine shows”, says Len Evans. Ian McKenzie says that the Perth show is improving all the time Another reason that Canberra is so highly rated is that only finished and bottled wines are eligible to be shown. Adelaide has recently adopted the same principle. To avoid the preparation of special ‘show samples’, test samples of random wines are bought at retail to compare to the show samples entered. Next is the issue of the judges themselves. Reality dictates that at the present time, most of the top wine judges in Australia are senior winemakers for large companies. Several shows, including Melbourne and Hobart (and until last year, Brisbane), exclude winemakers whose companies exhibit there from their judging panels. One very senior winemaker says that some wines given gold medals at the lesser shows “tend to raise a lot of eyebrows”. Len Evans argues that the exhibitor-judges in question are highly experienced people who work well off each other and, by judging together, are able to regulate themselves. He concedes that winemakers might favour their own company’s style, but says there’s a very good system of control. “There are two other judges and also a chairman to argue with him, in case a particular view is pushed too strongly,” he says. Which brings us back to the enigma of the Jimmy Watson, presented to the best one year-old red wine at the Melbourne show, invariably unfinished and unbottled and judged from samples taken straight from barrels. It has been made into Australia’s most celebrated wine trophy. “I don’t want to denigrate it”, says Len Evans, “but I’d have to say it’s like Madonna. Not everyone approves, but we all know it’s there.” Evans argues the trophy was nothing until Wolf Blass won it three times and correctly points the finger at those who run the Melbourne show for fostering its over-rated public image. Many people, self included, have put it to them that the Wine Society Trophy for the Best Open Red Wine is far more relevant and significant and should become the show’s premier award. They have responded by maintaining the Watson hype. Regardless of the number of winemakers who adulterate wines especially to win the Watson as Len Evans suggests, commercial reality, says John Duval, will see that the status quo is maintained. And, as Evans agrees, you take your trophies where and when you can find them. Having quoted winemakers throughout, it’s only fair to conclude with the views of a wine marketer. Brian Miller is National Sales and Marketing Manager for Richard Hamilton Wines and Leconfield, and he thinks it’s important to consider the trophies the winemakers don’t want to win – trays of delicate and fragile glassware. A member of the audience, he still wonders which sort of Zen forces were in action on the morning a shaking, staggering Chief Seppelt White Wine Maker successfully – but only just – negotiated the chairs, legs and tables en meandering route back to his distant seat at the Adelaide Wine Show presentation, still clutching an intact, but swaying trayfull, after a single, solitary hour’s sleep the night before.
