Recently Micheline and I went on a little road trip to taste wines at the Judgement of Kingston. Three Oregon Pinot Noirs were pitted against three Prince Edward County Pinot Noirs in a blind tasting. Oregon is globally renowned for its Pinot Noir and it promised to be an interesting contest.

The Judgement was held in November in a large ballroom, with about 200 wine enthusiasts attending. The event itself was quite pleasant, with a silent auction raising funds for Kingston Lionharts and the Wellington Foodbank. There was a generous spread of charcuterie at the table, and a pleasant jazz ensemble played as we sipped the wines and discussed them.

Participating wineries were a secret. No one was supposed to know one of our wines was in the lineup or even who we were.

When we arrived at our seats, we were confronted by six glasses of the different Pinot Noirs, identified only by numbers one through six.

“Micheline,” I said, “I am going to smell them and it will be obvious which one is ours.”

The wines were fantastic. Ten minutes later I was still frantically swirling and sniffing and sipping, trying to decide which was ours. I narrowed it down to which ones were likely Oregon wines and which were Prince Edward County. PEC has a distinctive minerality, acidity, and is nearly always made bone dry. The Oregon wines were a little plummy and seemed to have some residual sugar. Of the Prince Edward County wines, I narrowed it down to two. But I just couldn’t decide which one was ours.

I didn’t anticipate how stressful it would be to have skin in the game. It was a fun event for everybody else, but deadly serious to us. None of the other people seated at the table knew that our wine was in the lineup, and their comments on the wines were generous and unfiltered. “I DEFINITELY don’t like that one,” exclaimed one lady near me. “It has an offensive aroma! It smells like a barn.”

My heart skipped a beat. I thought “Oh no, what if that’s our wine?” (It wasn’t.)

I grabbed more samples of two of the wines, having already frantically sniffed and sipped my first samples down to nothing. I still couldn’t decide. We just bottled our Pinot a couple of weeks previous — in fact, when a JOK representative came to pick up the wine, we didn’t even have the labels ready. While I am constantly tasting the wine during its production, my relationship with the final blended and bottled version was new, and I didn’t know it well.

The judges, Michael Godel from WineAlign, influencer + wine expert Leah Spooner, and John Carnahan from All Canadian Wine Championships took the stage. Micheline and I were on the edge of our seats, on tenterhooks, awaiting the results. “Please don’t be last, please don’t be last” I whispered.

It’s a classy event: they never announce last place. They only announce the three top wines in reverse order. We were very pleased to hear County wines announced in the top second and third positions.

But for a few moments I was dismayed. The odds weren’t with us.

We held our breath as they revealed the last wine. Then we were floored.

Broken Stone Winery Pinot Noir had won the top judges choice and the second place audience favourite!

https://www.facebook.com/judgementofkingston/

What a great validation of the quality of County wines.