Award-winning wines highlight festival
Published Wednesday November 4th, 2009
There are top wines of all prices at World Wine & Food Expo
Want a chance to try some of the world's top wines as voted by sommeliers from across the Maritimes and beyond?
Now's your chance, as the 19th annual World Wine & Food Expo continues this week, highlighted by Friday and Saturday's Grand Tastings and many other events.
The wine festival features more than 360 wines from around the world, 238 of which were judged earlier this year by 10 sommeliers from across New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec.
The Wine Excellence Awards, a part of the World Wine & Food Expo since 2004, were held at NB Liquor's head office in Fredericton earlier this year.
Wines were broken into categories by price and style and then judged in a blind taste test on their flavour, clarity, colour, acidity, bitterness/astringency, body/texture, aroma, finish and overall impression.
Sommeliers had no idea what they were drinking -- they were only told the price point and style. While the taste tests sounds like a grand time, they do require a great deal of thought and concentration.
"You really have to have a good night's sleep and have to have your taste buds really well prepared for it," says Tammy Brideau, one of the sommeliers involved and a product advisor with NB Liquor. "You can't have too much coffee or spicy foods before so your taste buds are really relaxed to do this."
Newbie wine drinkers might have difficulty imagining that one can really tell the difference between over 200 wines, but Brideau says it just comes with experience.
The blind tastings were done with an auditor present and a head judge to ensure that everything was done professionally. Sommeliers would see, smell and taste wines, spit them out, rate the wines and move on to the next one.
They took breaks, ate bread and drank water to ensure their taste buds didn't tire out.
What the consumer gets out of all this wine sampling is a chance to try wines deemed superior by a group of experienced wine drinkers. If you go to the wine expo tastings this weekend and you're not sure what to try, you could decide to compare all the gold award-winning red wines or perhaps compare old world whites versus new world whites.
Nora Lacey, spokesperson for NB Liquor, says it's the chance to sample products before buying that really makes this festival a must-attend event.
"They can go into the expo, they can sample all these wines and determine whether they like them or not, make their list and come into the store and buy," Lacey says.
The many wines offered at the expo will all be on sale at NB Liquor's temporary store set up at the Moncton Coliseum Agrena. It opens Friday at 1 p.m.
And no matter what the judges think about these wines, you may not agree with them. Brideau says everyone has different tastes, even individual sommeliers.
"We're all different types of people judging," Brideau says. "Even if we're sommeliers, it doesn't mean we all have the same tastes."
She says a sommelier is trained to know a good, balanced wine, but some prefer more dry wines while others may prefer those with more of a fruit flavour.
For many people, a wine's price can be the key deciding factor. Wines were broken down into groups under $15, between $15 and $30 and over $30, so there are plenty of award winners that are affordable for everyone.
Along with Brideau, other sommeliers at the Wine Excellence Awards included Adam Dial, Paul LeBlanc, Robert Noel, Craig Pinhey, Colette St. Pierre, Doug Watling, Doug Williams and Sean Wood.
Head judge was Elyse Lambert of Montreal, a two-time winner of the Best Sommelier in Quebec competition and third-place winner of the 2006 Best Sommelier in Canada competition.
The judging process was overseen by an auditor who observed the process, collected the score sheets and tallied the scores. The wines which received the highest average scores within each category were awarded a medal.
* Moncton's World Wine & Food Expo is a homegrown success story. See LIFE & TIMES/D1
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