The first leg of the India Wine Challenge went underway at London today with a panel of seven judges tasting a portion of about 350 wines shipped for tasting to the city. Subhash Arora who has been invited to be a part of the panel of judges from India for the second time reports.
Robert Joseph, Chairman of the wine competition being held for the second time since its inception last year was all set with wines covered with the blinders and the computer generating the random numbers assigned to each wine at 9am in the morning. Wines had been lined up in various categories for the panel of seven judges divided into two groups. The tasting will continue on 8th and 9th October during which 7 more judges are expected to join.
Magandeep Singh has been the second invitee judge from India. Other jurists besides Robert Joseph, were Tom Forrest (UK), Gina Bricklebank (UK), and Mike Ratcliffe & Yegas Naidoo (S. Africa).
Addressing the panel, Robert said that every wine competition was a learning experience for him. It was like playing a cricket match where no matter how well you play cricket, you find out a couple of new shots that weren't there earlier. Also explaining the concept of getting the wines to London, he said that it was primarily because of complex laws of customs and excise in India, besides the logistics which was a problem for the foreign producers who had no representation in India yet. It would be unfair for them to pay the high customs duties and still not be sure if the samples would reach intact.
Conceding that the Indian authorities had been very helpful last year, he hoped that next year onwards it could be held completely in India so that the losses could also be minimised. In this scenario, the organisers could perhaps pay a lumpsum duty to the government like he had managed it in China, which also has been a difficult country to deal with. With 50 competitions he has organsied so far, he rued that India had been the most difficult country to hold a wine competition of this nature.
Explaining why he did not think price should be a deciding factor for categorising wines in a way that many competitions like Decanter do, he said no matter what system you adopt there are bound to be drawbacks. One has to be careful and dedicated enough to make sure that each wine gets its due share of representation. To this extent, the discussions are freely permitted in the India Wine Challenge within the panel, after the marks are assigned by the individual judges. In case of Gold medals or conflicting opinion of a panel, the other panel is invited to taste as well. Only when the consensus is arrived at, do the judges move on to the next wine as one saw in a few cases where fairly long discussions took place before the verdict could be recorded.
Also, in this competition, the panel is encouraged to award medals to each wine individually without limiting the percentage to a certain number due to the lot size of each category. ' Why should good wines be penalised just because they are part of a group which has better quality wines?,' he posed the question to the jurors.
The second and final leg of the competition will be held at Hotel Hyatt Regency in Delhi on November 11 and 12 when the wines arriving late at London, several award winning wines (to determine the best- in- a- category wines) as well as the wines submitted in India by Indian producers and wine importers will be tasted by a panel which will include several other visiting judges like Gina Gallo, Mike Ratcliffe, Vanya Cullen, Roberto Bava and John Forrest.
The overseas producers who have been late in submitting wines to London can still participate by sending them directly to Delhi, says Robert. The procedure has already been outlined on www.indianwineacademy.com.
Results of the India Wine Challenge will be announced on December 2, 2008 at the IFE-India food and wine show to be held at Pragati Maidan, Delhi from December 2-4.
Subhash Arora
London
October 7, 200
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