Every January, the Colorado wine industry trade association, CAVE, and the Western Colorado Horticulture Society host a conference called VinCO. VinCO is an educational conference for wineries, winemakers, grape growers, and others in the wine industry. Sarah has been attending VinCO for the past several years and looks forward to this conference each year.
The sessions are led by national experts in the wine industry, and Sarah always learns so much about wine and winemaking. One of the most interesting sessions this year was called You Be The Judge where we learned about how the Colorado Governor's Cup winemaking competition is judged. First, each person judged four wines individually according to the Governor's Cup criteria. Then, everyone at each table discussed their individual scores and awarded a medal (gold, silver, bronze, or no medal - indicating poor quality) to each wine. Finally, for each wine, a representative from each table called out their medal. The scores were wildly different! For one of the wines, one table awarded it a gold medal and the next table awarded the same wine no medal. It was a very practical demonstration of how subjective wine judging can be. The takeaway from this session was - if you like a wine, drink it, and don't worry about its score.
Another interesting seminar featured barrel tastings of the same vintage of Cabernet Sauvignon that were aged in different oak barrels (pictured at the beginning of this post). There were two oak barrels from different regions in France, and the wine obtained a very different profile from each barrel. Sarah is constantly fascinated by how many different things factor into what ultimately ends up in her glass!
One of the highlights of VinCO is the wine industry awards banquet. CAVE gives out awards to the Winery of the Year, Grower of the Year, and Friend of the Colorado Wine Industry. This year's Winery of the Year was awarded to LaNoue DuBois Winery, and the Grower of the Year was awarded to Hillary and Casey Eales of Mafia Princess Wines. This year, Sarah had the honor of presenting the Friend of the Colorado Wine Industry Award to Juliann Adams of Vines 79 Wine Barn. Juliann has served on many boards and committees associated with Colorado's wine industry over the years, and has also been very involved with educational events for amateur winemakers. A well-deserved award!
Overall, VinCO was a great success! Sarah learned a lot and got to reconnect with colleagues and meet new ones. There is a lot of energy around the exciting things happening in Colorado's wine industry now and what is planned for the future!
Cheers,
Sarah and Jason