San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition Tasting: February 28, San Francisco

If there is one public wine tasting event that rivals San Francisco's yearly ZAP Zinfandel tasting for sheer size and chaos, it could only be the annual Chronicle Wine Competition Tasting. Every year the San Francisco Chronicle (with a lot of help) holds a wine competition, judged by more than 60 wine professionals, in which they award medals to their top choices from among over 4,700 wines from all across America. This competition has grown over the last 8 years to be the largest competitive tasting of American wines in the world.

The judges hand out hundreds of medals and awards. Those awards are released to the public, and then about a month later, many of the award winning wines, plus a lot more are poured for the public in a four-hour event that takes over Fort Mason for a Saturday afternoon. There are usually cooking demonstrations and food booths, and various other diversions.

Regardless of how I feel about such wine competitions, this tasting, like all such public events, represents an incredible opportunity to educate your palate and discover new wines to enjoy. This tasting in particular offers a unique chance to taste wine from a lot of less well known wine regions (i.e. not California, Oregon, or Washington) in addition to hundreds of wines from these more well-known wine regions.

So if you don't have plans this Saturday and want to expand your oenological horizons, the experience is well worth the price of admission.

San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition Public Tasting
Saturday, February 28, 2009 2pm - 5pm
Festival Pavilion - Fort Mason Center
Marina Boulevard, San Francisco, CA 94123 (map)

Tickets are $60 if purchased in advance, $80 at the door. To purchase tickets visit www.winejudging.com or call 888.695.0888.

My usual tips for large public tastings: get a good night's sleep; go with food in your belly; wear dark clothes; drink lots of water; and if you want to really enjoy yourself, SPIT!

Posted by: Alder on February 24, 2009 10:44 PM: Filed under: Wine Activities; Like this post? Share it! Digg it! - Add to del.icio.us - Add to Stumbleupon - Add to Reddit

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Comments (6)

rjh wrote:

02.26.09 at 9:14 PM

i will definitely be there

Craig Haserot wrote:

02.27.09 at 11:16 AM

Hey Alder -

We won a bunch of medals and we're going to pour. Is this more of a drunkfest or a decent opp for a winery?

Alder wrote:

02.27.09 at 11:22 AM

Chris,

I think it gets pretty chaotic later in the day. I don't have a good sense at all about whether these large public tastings are beneficial to wineries.

Alder

paulcarufel wrote:

03.01.09 at 2:06 PM

Do you need more 'buzz?' Maybe pour a little and then - leave them wanting more? Which awards and when will they be posted - or have they already been?

Alder wrote:

03.01.09 at 2:26 PM

Paul,

There was a link in the post to the medal winners. Here it is: http://www.winejudging.com/medal_winners.htm

Craig Haserot - Sojourn wrote:

03.01.09 at 5:52 PM

Ok, bad drunkfest. Fun folks to drink with if that is your gig but otherwise this event is a winery one and out.