NY wines wending west again

In the summer of 2003, the New York Wine & Food Classic competition had an unusual venue.

California.

The idea behind shipping the annual judging of New York wines somewhere other than in New York State was to expose more labels to West Coast judges, sommeliers and wine writers. Now, after returning to its own judging roots for three years, the Classic will ship the competition back to Napa, CA, on Aug. 7 and 8.

The event will again be held at Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food & the Arts (seen here). Peter Marks, Copia's curator of wine, will handle the venue arrangements.

As one of the New York Classic's regular judges, I was on the panels at Copia in '03. Since your nose is in a glass most of the time, the surroundings don't influence your opinions. But, I must admit that since we were on display in a main corridor/display area of Copia where visitors could stop and stare from time to time, there was a lot of extra swirling, sniffing and spitting for the benefit of onlookers.

Says Jim Trezise, president of the sponsoring organization, the New York Wine & Grape Foundation, there is a major difference between the '03 event and this year's: " New York wineries can now ship directly to California consumers. We were hoping that would be the case in 2003, but it took until 2005 to get the legislation passed.

"The Governor’s Cup winner from that year, Hermann J. Wiemer" -- for his dry riesling -- "immediately got several calls from Californians wanting to purchase it, but he had to say no. This year the answer will be yes."

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