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 holds a wine competition, judged by 55 wine professionals, in which they award medals to their top choices from among over three thousand California wines. This competition has grown over the last 6 years to be the largest competitive tasting of American wines in the world.
The judges (who really have a tough job of it) 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.
This is one event I typically don’t go to, mostly because they don’t have a trade component to the tasting. However, on a beautiful day in San Francisco for someone who wasn’t focused on trying to taste as many wines as I usually do, it could probably be a good time.
San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition Public Tasting
Saturday February 25, 2006 1:00 ” 5:00 PM
Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center
San Francisco, CA
(707) 894-3992
Tickets are $40 in advance, $50 on the day of the show, if still available. For more information, check out the official web site.