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Rules for Club Competitions
- The purpose of the competition is to allow members to compare their wines against others, and to provide objective feedback to members on their wines, both by the use of the club's scoring system and from descriptive comments and suggestions from other club members.
- The Wine Steward will conduct the competitions, and supervise the tabulation of the results.
- The specific categories for each competition, and the rules governing which wines are eligible for each category, are determined by the Board and interpreted as necessary by the Wine Steward.
- In order to keep the competitions to a reasonable size, a member may not enter more than one wine per category.
- Entries should be submitted in standard 750 ml wine bottles. (Dessert wines may be entered in 375 ml bottles.) No labels or other identifying markings should appear on the bottle, other than the club’s standard entry label, so that the identity of the winemaker will not be known during judging.
- Club wine competitions are for amateur wines only. Wines produced in commercial facilities which are licensed to produce wines for sale are not eligible for club competitions.
- For each category, one or more Table Judges will be designated by the Wine Steward.
- The total score for each wine will consist of the score of the Table Judge (or average score of the Table Judges) for that wine, multiplied by 2/3, plus the average score of all other members and guests for that wine, multiplied by 1/3.
- Tie breakers: First tie breaker will be attempted using the Table Judge single or average score; Second tie breaker will be attempted using an equally weighted average Table Judge/Member/Guest score; Third tie breaker will be determined by having the Wine Steward and Scoring Table Members judge the wines.
- Table Judges, members and guests may not judge wines in a category in which they (or a family member) have submitted a wine. Also, since knowing who submitted a particular wine makes it difficult to score that wine objectively, no one should submit a score for a wine if they know the identity of the winemaker.
- Some categories may contain fewer entries than others, and some groups (tables) of judges and members may finish their judging before others. Table judges, members and guests who have finished judging the wines in their own categories should not disturb those still judging by loud talk, laughter or interrupting them to ask questions about the wines in their category.
- The intent of the club is that wines are to be judged in good faith, anonymously and objectively. If the Wine Steward has reasonable cause to believe that any Table Judge, member or guest has intentionally skewed their scoring of one or more wines, in order to improperly influence the results of the competition, the Wine Steward may exclude any scores submitted by such person from the official tabulation of results.
- After the judging and tabulation of scores, the Wine Steward will award ribbons or other suitable indicators to the First Place, Second Place and Third Place wines in each category (based on the scores as described above), provided that wines awarded First, Second and Third place ribbons have earned scores of at least 12, 11 and 10 points (respectively). For example, if the highest-scoring wine in a category earned a score of at least 11 but less than 12, it would be awarded a Second Place ribbon, and the next highest-scoring wine would be awarded a Third Place ribbon (assuming it had scored at least 10 points). If the highest-scoring wine earned a score of at least 10 but less than 11, it would be awarded a Third Place ribbon.
- The Wine Steward will act as the final authority on interpreting the above rules and policies during wine competitions, and is empowered to resolve any disputes or disagreements which may arise, related to the rules or conduct of the competition.
(Adopted 11/20/2016)
(Revised 11/19/2017)