Personalities

Michele Shah: female judge
«Vinnaya Karta» №1 (82) January 2007

Englishwoman Michele Shah has lived in Italy for 30 years.

She is one of the leading experts on the wines of the country. Michele regularly sits on judging panels of prestigious international competitions and has agreed to talk about them in her first Russian interview.

– I’ve been connected with wine a lifetime. My first experiences with wine were at home. My family always drank wine at meals, so I was imbibed with wine culture since I was about five or six — since I can remember. I always had a small glass of wine next to my glass of water and was thoroughly encouraged to take a sip of wine at every meal at home. At that time we were living in Italy so I can remember seeing fiaschi of Brolio on the table because that was how Chianti Classico was bottled at that time. If my parents were going out, the only bribe that I would accept for being good was to have a bottle of Lambrusco! Seriously, I’ve been involved with wine for the last ten years. Before that I was working in agriculture, but in a completely different sphere.

– If it’s properly run and has the proper promotional outlets afterwards, then an international competition is important because it can give more of a prominent vision to producers both in a consumer and a trade sector.

I can give examples. I usually sit on two competitions — International Wine & Spirit Competition which has main focus is trade and Decanter World Wine Awards aimed really at consumer because all results come out in Decanter magazine. Obviously, it partly influences the trade because it does read Decanter, but it mainly goes to the consumer end of market.

The International Wine & Spirit Competition is very focused towards the trade. The results are published in trade magazines. Very often importers, especially in the UK, will ask for the results and will see which wines have done well and are not imported in the UK. That may be a good tool for a producer to get an entry into the UK market or maybe any other market. And of course, producers can then put some form of publicity on the bottle neck — a medal or a sticker. This is another way of attracting attention. Then I think it may be interesting for a producer to confront himself with other wines from the same region and the same price category.

– That’s a very good question. I have thought about it a lot. Obviously, you cannot say that the wine that has won a gold medal or a trophy is the best Merlot or Premier Grand Cru in the world. The top estates have very little interest in putting their wine into the competition. Sometimes you get really strange things. You can get several really top estates, a handful of middle range and a whole range of unknown estates.

It is very important that the judging teams for each category, for each country should be highly specialized people. In order to judge wines of a country or an area, you must really know what you are tasting. Everything is blind tasted. In Decanter World Wine Awards you are given the region, the grape variety and price categories. There are five brackets of pricing — under 3 pounds, between 3 and 5, between 5 and 7, between 7 and 10 and above 10 pounds. That is being objective — at least you can see quality/price ratio, you’ve got people who know the wines of the area. I think all competitions should really work in that way and it is very important. It’s not easy to understand wines of certain countries, especially Italy where you’ve got so many different regions and grape varieties. You really need to know what you are tasting.

– It’s always done as a blind tasting. In Decanter you split up into teams, usually of four people. One of the four is appointed a super-judge. That person will have ultimate authority to rule over the others. If it cannot be resolved in the team, you have the person who is in charge of the country. If the problem remains, it will be dealt with by director of the competition.

The actual tasting goes as follows. Wines are tasted in flights, you have a form that you fill in and make your own notes and put a score. In Decanter World Wine Awards the rating system is up to 20 points. Anything under 14,5 points is not considered further. But if somebody has given it 14,5, somebody 15,5, somebody 17 points, you have a team discussion and you resolve it in your team. If the wine is commended, or if it’s bronze, silver or gold, the best tasting notes will be taken and published in the magazine. We have great fun at discussions. Wine is quite subjective — some people have different ideas, but obviously when we do have people who really understand the region and really understand the wines, you are not going to get much disparity in opinion and ideas. There’s a certain amount of discussion which is always useful.

International Wine & Spirit competition is much more individual. You taste the wines and you don’t discuss them. You hand in your tasting sheets and then it’s all elaborated. There is no influence. On the Decanter table we can have influence — say, somebody is a Master of Wine and you may think that he knows better. But there are a lot of people who do not force their opinion. It’s usually fairly democratic; we aren’t throwing bottles at each other. If there’s a corked wine, immediately we are given another bottle. It is very civilized. We spend a whole day there, sometimes taste up to 90 wines a day — and that is for 4 or 5 days consecutively. It is a very demanding task.

– Not necessarily. If we talk about Italy, you get may get importers, retailers selling Italian wines, sommeliers from Italian restaurants on the panel. People are not necessarily Italian but they have expertise in country’s wines.

– I’ve seen over the last 3-4 years a slight return to more indigenous varieties, although the international varieties are still being used a lot. There is also less emphasis on over-oaking and slightly less tendency to create opulent, sometimes overextracted wines. So there is a sign of return to a more classic trend.

– I think that competitions will continue and even increase their influence. At the moment there is such a slump in the wine trade. Producers hope to hang on to anything in order to make their wines more visible. Competitions are a good tool to sell their wines, so producers will be keen.