Wine with Meg + Mel
The fun + frank podcast which helps you navigate the world of wine. Hosted by Australia's first female Master of Wine Meg Brodtmann, and self-titled Master of Sabrage Mel Gilcrist.
Wine with Meg + Mel
Behind the Scenes of the Sydney Royal Wine Show with Angus Barnes
Angus Barnes, Chair of the Sydney Royal Wine Show, shares insider perspectives on Australia's premier wine competition and his journey through the wine industry.
• Born in the Hunter Valley, Angus fell in love with wine while backpacking through Europe
• His extensive career spans roles at Pernod Ricard, NSW Wine, Wine Communicators Australia, and now Bunamagoo Estate Wines
• The Sydney Royal Wine Show judged 1,550 wine samples and poured over 15,000 glasses during the competition
• This year's Wine of Show winner was a $27 Abbeville Cabernet Sauvignon from Margaret River
• Chardonnay dominated the gold medals with 12 awarded across different regions
• Margaret River showed exceptional form with gold medals across multiple varieties
• The wine show process maintains integrity through blind tastings and strict conflict of interest protocols
• Judges are selected with diversity in mind, balancing technical expertise with stylistic perspectives
• The Grape, Grain & Graze Festival on September 20th offers consumers the chance to taste all competition wines
• The RAS supports industry development through scholarships for nine emerging wine professionals each year
Join us at the Grape, Grain & Graze Festival on September 20th to taste these award-winning wines yourself! Enter our competition on Instagram by following @winewithmeganmal and @royalagricultural_nsw and tagging who you'd bring along.
Follow us on instagram @winewithmegandmel
Hi and welcome to Wine with Megan Mal. We're here to help you navigate the world of wine. I'm Mal Gillichrist, and today I'm actually joined by Angus Barnes. Angus is the chair of the Sydney Royal Wine Show. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, angus.
Speaker 1:Absolute pleasure, Mel. Good to see you.
Speaker 2:I know right we were saying this last episode that I know you from like so long ago. You knew me right as I was just getting into wine in the first place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's correct. Back at the Pernod Ricard days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, back at Pernod Ricard. So you've got a really, really long history. You've done so much in the world of wine, so maybe can you just start by taking us through a bit of that.
Speaker 1:Right, thanks, mel. I'm originally from the Hunter Valley, born and bred, but it's probably fair to say I joined the wine industry as part of my backpacking journey through Europe. I got to the UK and joined the wine industry over there and three things happened that were great for me. One is I worked for an organisation called Oddbins and they were terrific wine educators and a great place to work. Secondly, I did my Wine and Spirit Education Trust diploma while I was over there. And the third thing is that I had a lovely young Scottish woman walk into the store in Pinnacle and she's now my wife and the mother of our three children. Oh, that's nice.
Speaker 1:I then sort of came back to Australia and had 15 years with Pernod Ricard, as you know, and again that was a great company and a great organisation and I must say I do wish the people at Vinicky all the best for the future and again I think it's important that they're successful. I had five years as CEO of New South Wales Wine, some time with the Wine Communicators Australia, both as chair and executive chair, and during that time I sort of did my diploma in viticulture. I became a counsellor at the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales. I've had various roles within the industry and I'm now very happily the general manager of Bunamagoo Estate Lines, which is a beautiful small, medium-sized winery up in Mudgee, new South Wales.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God. Okay, so I knew about all the pederacard and the GM and even all the industry roles and stuff, but I had no idea that you have a diploma in viticulture as well.
Speaker 1:I thought I'd try to get my keyboard hands a little dirty and at one stage I thought I was going to buy a vineyard and a cellar door, and I still have ambitions to do that and I want to be able to understand what to do. And again, I love spending time in the viticulture, out in the vineyards, and I spend some time pruning and pretend that I know a few things every time I get out there.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God, that is so cool. That is like what everyone in wine everyone who's like really passionate about wine, who's in it always dreams of doing. That kind of. I love that you've got that idea about. Well, we were going to do some listener questions at the end, but it actually feels like a good time to jump to one of those listener questions, because Kate asked if you could start your own winery or vineyard. Where would it be? So why don't you answer that one before we get too far into it?
Speaker 1:It's a lovely question, so I did have to think about this. It would be better to say, and again, I'm passionate in New South Wales and passionate in Australia, but I think Burgundy might be the capital of wine in the world and I love Pinot Noir and, if money was no object, I'd love to have a lovely vineyard and winery on the side of one of those lovely hills in Burgundy and make those two styles of wines but more realistically yeah but I mean that.
Speaker 2:So does that mean you're more of a traditionalist over innovation and new styles?
Speaker 1:oh, look, I think, um, I think tradition is the backbone of a lot of what good things happen in wine. We've been making great wines in the world for 1,000 years and in Australia for 200 years, and I think that's important. But I also think that if you continue to do things the way you've done in the past, going into the future, you'll lose people along the way. So I think you've really got to think about what's important, what's innovative, what consumers want, which areas that light and fresh, and Prosecco and Pinot, gris and Rose and all those things.
Speaker 2:Well, thinking about Burgundy, they're doing all right. Burgundy hasn't lost anyone so far, have they Maybe now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. No, that's right no, that's right, oh, that's. But then if I came back to Australia, I'd love to, you know, get a pin yard in somewhere like Orange, or possibly even Mudgee, where I am now, which?
Speaker 2:is so beautiful.
Speaker 1:Maybe tourism based in Acelador yeah, oh, so good.
Speaker 2:Okay, so now that we know a bit about you, you've done I don't know almost everything there is to do in the industry. Can you take us through what your role is as chair, and is there a difference between chair and executive Chair? Are you just a fancy chair? What's that about?
Speaker 1:So, mel, my role is chair of the Wine Committee for the RAS of New South Wales, a voluntary role. It means that I'm responsible, with my committee, for the Sydney Royal Wine Show, funnily enough, the Sydney Royal Beer and Cider Show, as well as the newly created Sydney Royal Distilled Spirit Show. We then have a chair of judges in each of the shows. In the wine case this year it was Mike Julius, but my role is in charge of the committee and I guess the running of the actual show and the way the show is implemented.
Speaker 2:Right, so the way a wine show runs is that you've got all your judges and then you've got the chair who kind of oversees the judges and like settles any fights and stuff. Are you involved in that like more detailed day to day stuff, or are you just overseeing that whole thing?
Speaker 1:so now it's it's. It's really it's a whole weird process and I guess there's two separate areas. During the course of the year we work on the schedule, make sure that all the classes are right, if there's any new classes that we put in, like a temporary low class this year, or a low alcohol or low or no alcohol class, and we make sure the integrity of the show is correct. We do the audits of the entries and we then work with the care judges to select the judging panel and make sure that that side of it's worked out well. And then during the actual show my title becomes Fun Enough Steward-in-Chief, which really means that I am there to oversee the way the show works itself. And really in a good year my role is quite minimal. I just steer the ship if there's a problem. And this year and Fun Enough the last couple of years it's been relatively smooth sailing because we've got a good team backing us up and behind the scenes.
Speaker 2:What would a problem be? What's an example of a problem?
Speaker 1:Oh look, if a wine came through and all of a sudden we found out that either the sample was missing, or that they might not have enough quantities to be eligible to win the gold medal or the trophy, or that there's a real problem, or that a judge might fall sick on that day, and how we work out those sort of things. So generally it's just the operations of the show itself.
Speaker 2:So when me and Meg were tasting these wines last week, we had four wines. Meg poured them and then immediately forgot which white was which and had to be like oh and taste and compare and re-pour. You poured, was it 1,800? Is that what I read?
Speaker 1:Yes, it was 1,550 samples, but we poured over 15,000 glasses of wine during the course of the week.
Speaker 2:How many mix-ups were there?
Speaker 1:Look, we have a team of about 30-odd stewards who work through the course of the week and we have a leader of each panel and then a chief steward for the actual week and their role is to make sure that really, the ability to make a mistake is almost real. So we make sure that all the glasses are laid out, we check them out, we make sure that every glass is full so sample A is definitely one of us full before we put one sample two, etc. Etc. So again, there will be one or two times during the show where something is, there's a concern rather than a mistake, in which case we stop and we say where are we at? Do we need to go and re-pour the whole set again? But really it's a pretty tight show and there's no mistakes, he says.
Speaker 2:That is very impressive. Okay, so the show this year. If people listened and in fact, if you're listening and you haven't listened to last week's episode, definitely go back and listen to last week's episode, because me and Meg tasted some of the standout wines. But, Angus, what were your kind of main overall takeaways, what were the biggest things that you brought out of this year?
Speaker 1:Look, I think there were a number of things that I really came out with. I thought there were probably five key sort of absolute headlines for me. The first one you talked about last week is there are a number of wines that won significant trophies, that are available to us all in our own budget. The value in some of those wines, particularly that to Margaret River Cabernet, which won Wine of the Show, but also some of those Barry and Son wines, were fantastic. Number one. Number two there was a vast cross-section of wines from five different states and 23 regions that won gold medals. So really, what I'm saying there is there are beautiful wines right across this country. Um, number three for me, margaret river came back into form, or probably never was out of form, but they had a particularly strong show, so, um, and they had gold medals across um, cabernet, cabernet bling and chardonnay, uhin Blanc, so really, and the Rose, that was also from Margaret. So they did super well.
Speaker 2:Do you think that does that point to like a particular vintage performing well, or is that? What do you think that has to do with?
Speaker 1:Oh look, I think the 23 wines are particularly good out of Margaret River. I mean, I thought that Cabernet was outstanding. I always sort of try to judge it by what wines that I end up having in my cellar, and when I I saw the results last Friday and went through them all and they were announced On the weekend, I bought a few of their wines. I bought that beautiful Cabernet, I bought some of that, the Barry and Sons Shiraz, which I think is just fantastic drinking. I bought some of the Devil's Corner Resolution Reefling, which are just magic wine, and also splashed out and bought a bit of that Yabby Lake Tasmanian Pinot Noir, nice.
Speaker 2:So some lovely wines. And so let's talk about this Abbeville Cabernet, because $27 and it won Wine of Show. Does that mean everyone should stop drinking wine over like $30? We don't need expensive wine anymore.
Speaker 1:No and.
Speaker 1:I think that's a message we don't want to get across. We want to have a look at wines for their individuality. But I just think in this particular case and this wine comes from a large organisation or larger organisation called the Fogany Group and they did particularly well in the show. So they also won the Chardonnay in the show, the White Wine in the show, and I think they're making terrific wines. They've invested a lot of money and time into their vineyards, the show, the white wine in the show, and I think they're making terrific wines. They've invested a lot of money and time into their vineyards, into their winery operations. I think, speaking to the winemaker, julian Langworthy, he was particularly excited about this wine before the show and thought it was a particularly good example. And again it came through. But I don't drink a huge amount of Cabernet and when I tried this one I said this is everything I've missed about not drinking Cabernet and I reminded myself to get back into it and I voted with my feet.
Speaker 2:I actually wasn't familiar with the winery at all. Is it up and coming Like, where did they come from? It feels like they come out of nowhere a bit.
Speaker 1:So Abbey Vale is a and again, I'm not an expert on this, but Deepwood Estate, which is also part of the Fogarty Group, is their more, I guess, their more prestigious or their larger label. And I think Abbey Vale is a smaller side product. But gee, they made a good wine this year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and were they, how would and how did they react? Were they expecting this?
Speaker 1:Oh look, I think he liked the wine. I must say and again I hope I'm not speaking out of school, but I left the lunch at about five or six o'clock and I saw a photo later on in the night with the winemaker lying on the bar in good form but with the full ribbons for the trophies that he'd won laying across him. So I think he was particularly excited about what a great day they'd had.
Speaker 2:I love to hear that, Like I'm sure you know, pen folds and everything and just like oh, we get it all the time. It's so nice to hear about ill-ery that's actually can be super stoked about something like this, that's so good, yes, so they should be again.
Speaker 1:They did very well across a number of wines, but particularly that one, so good luck to them, yeah and so like what about varietals or regions?
Speaker 2:any big surprises that you weren't expecting? I?
Speaker 1:think south australia came back into favour. So last year it seemed that a lot of the big trophies went to New South Wales and went to Victoria, whereas South Australia, particularly with the Grenache and those Clare wines from particularly Barian Sons I think, were right back in form, which is terrific for them. The other big thing that I thought was Chardonnay is great. I mean there were 12 gold medals across Chardonnay, which is out of the 103 gold medals that were awarded across Chardonnay was the biggest variety. And again I just think there was such a beautiful array of Chardonnays from again right across the country. So interesting wines. I love some of the alternate varietals. So the San Gervaisian that you tried from Rutherford and from De Bordelais I thought was lovely, and again I thought the Chenin Blanc from Margaret River was lovely. So again there were some really interesting wines.
Speaker 2:Are those alternative categories getting more entries every year?
Speaker 1:There are. So what we tend to do is we have another reds category and as we see more and more varietals, what entries come in, we might split it up into a specific varietal category. So Tempranillo is the best example. Over the years we've had more and more Tempranillos and this year we had a Tempranillo-only class and I think that recognizes that some of these varietals are becoming. I think that recognizes that some of these varieties are becoming, I think, more suitable to the Australian climate. But I think, as the vines get older and the wines get better, they deserve their time in the sun and they seem to be getting them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome. So I mean, I think this kind of question lends itself nicely if we go a bit more broadly into wine shows generally Tradition versus innovation, like where do you stand? Do you think that wine shows should? And especially Sydney Royal has a lot of prestige, has a lot of history. How important is it to maintain that versus the need to stay relevant, keep up with trends and innovate?
Speaker 1:So I think innovation is critical to the future of the wine industry and to the wine shows in general. We love the Royal Aquaculture Society of New South Wales and the Sydney Royal. We've celebrated 200 years since our first show last year and that's really important and that means that we've got history, we've got integrity and people want to be associated with a show with this sort of history. But then it's our responsibility to say what do consumers want, what do the exhibitors want, what do the traders and what do the media want? And they want to see things that are important to them as they go forward. It might be different categories. It might be a different way to communicate the winners. In the old days the medals would come out and you could fax off your list to your retailers and the next day you'd take an order from them. I think those days have changed. We've got to work closer with the industry. We've got to say, when you win a gold medal or a trophy, this is one way that you can talk to your consumers or talk to the trade about that. But also it's an opportunity for the exhibitors to benchmark their wines against what's happening in the marketplace. So I think the responsibility of the judges to write notes that are usable and informative to those exhibitors helps them. They've paid some money to enter the show. They've sent some samples in to get some feedback from the third party. I think is very valuable. So I think there's lots of things happening.
Speaker 1:The other thing I'm going to say is we have changed in some ways over the years the way or the style of the judges. So historically we used to have, I guess, old white men in suits and white coats and now we have, I guess, a nice blend between what I'm going to call technical judges, which are generally wine makers, and stylistic judges, which are generally winemakers, and stylistic judges, which are people like wine educators, like sommeliers, like retailers, people with a genuine interest in wine but probably closer to the consumer. We might like to have a broad diversity of geographical people so that you know if you're from one region you might particularly like a style of wine. But to have a broad section of judges across a whole bunch of regions also helps. So, um, I think that's that's helped, helping to make wine judges I sorry, wine shows more relevant.
Speaker 2:Uh, going into the future and um, and that's actually lends itself to a question that we had from a listener. Tony asked how you do go about um selecting your judges and is is that that's evolving, and it sounds like it is from what you just said.
Speaker 1:I think it's really important. I think that making sure that that cross between technical judges and style judges is really important. And the way it happens is, at the start of the planning process, the wine committee and the chair of judges, and really we want to give the chair of judges as much opportunity to make their decisions about who they want, but also to say to them this is the sort of blend of judges we want. We rotate judges every two to three years. So for an associate, you generally do two years and for a judge and a senior judge you do three years and then you rotate out, and that means that we can have a pipeline of people coming in and we don't have one person overly influencing the way the shows work. And the last thing is, for some classes, like fortified wines and sparkling wines, it's good to have someone with a little bit of an expertise in that particular area.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, Sparkling wine is such a different ball game.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I was, like I've said to Meg before that, like it's still wineries. I used to. You know, I used to love it when the winemaker would be like, mel, can you taste this and let me know what you think. And I'm like, yep, okay. And then I get to Shandon and I taste these base wines and go, yeah, you're on your. I have no idea what's going on here. They're magicians. They are magicians, I agree. So there's a lot of people listening. We've got kind of like half trade, half consumer listeners here, and so some of them are in the industry and they know a bit about how it works and stuff. But we've got a lot of listeners who literally just go into the bottle shop and they're looking for something to choose. So can you give a little bit of an idea of if someone sees a gold medal from a show or a trophy medal or something like what does that mean? Can they always trust it?
Speaker 1:Look, I think we as wine shows should be working closely together.
Speaker 1:There's a bit of a pyramid in the show system in Australia, and Australia in my mind, and I think in most people's minds, is the best series of wine shows in the world.
Speaker 1:But let's say in Australia we have regional shows, so we might have a Hunter Valley show or the Yarra Valley show or the Barossa show, and then there might be a state show, so the New South Wales Wine Awards or the Victorian Wine Awards, and then the capital city shows, so the city royal or the Melbourne Royal or the Royal Adelaide show that come together.
Speaker 1:So I think the shows generally award a small percentage of wines gold medals. For us, this 6.7% of all the wines that were entered achieved a gold medal. So you know that that wine is really the one in 20 or the one in 18 top wines in the shows and quite frankly, the entries we get are generally the top end of the wine industry anyway. So people are generally they only enter their absolute better wines because they want to be judged against the best. So yes, I think you can confidently say that a gold medal winner or a trophy medal winner, particularly from those capital city shows, or the regional shows or the state shows, really represents the pinnacle of that particular varietal and maybe that particular region.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, sustainability is something I want to talk to you about, and we weren't able to orchestrate Meg being on this call as well, so I feel like I have to wear her hat for a second, because she's the one between us that will literally shout like. I control the mics and when I feel a heavy bottle that's been sent to us and I have to pass it to her, I like turn down the mic because I know she's going to complain. It's a big thing. We're all thinking about it. What roles do you think wine shows should play in sustainability? Like, should we be rewarding environmental progress as well as quality?
Speaker 1:So the answer is clearly yes. One of the roles of the RIS of New South Wales is to champion excellence in agriculture and I think sustainability is a big part of that. We've been thinking about it for quite some time. We haven't quite got to the answer. I'm a marketeer I guess by history and I think we should be telling that story about sustainability absolutely critically in what we do both domestically and around the world. How we do that through the wine shows we haven't completely cracked that nut, but we certainly believe there is an opportunity for us to work on the credentials of sustainable producers and obviously we support the Sustainable Wine Growing Australia program and maybe there's a way for us to do that yet, but we're still working through it. But I totally agree that there is an opportunity for us to acknowledge those producers who work in a sustainable manner and I think it's fair to say the industry is moving that way, both. With a bit of carrot and a bit of spit applied to this. Yeah, no, I agree.
Speaker 2:I had a little think about it and I was like there's no way that I can think of that makes sense without feeling like you're just shoehorning it in, yeah, so, but yeah, it would be nice if there was some way we could bring it into it because, yeah, consumers want to know. So, but yeah, it would be nice if there was some way we can bring it into it because, yeah, consumers want to know. Well, do you think consumers want to know? Do they care?
Speaker 1:Yes, I think they do care. So I mean, the industry has done a lot of studies about sustainability and I guess in some ways the answer is that they'd like to know it's there. They might not be willing at this point in time to spend a huge amount of extra money to know that a wine is a sustainable credential. My belief is we've got this wonderful program of sustainable wine growing in Australia. We should be seeing it. We should be making sure that the wine companies that support it have it on their bottles and that as an industry, we say you know we are working towards more sustainable practices and we want to pass the wine tree out to our children and to the next generation in at least as good a state as it is now, if not better.
Speaker 2:Well, sustainable Wine Growing Australia is a great program, but it is notoriously kind of hard to achieve and not too many are there yet. But would you love to see a day, or do you think a day is possible, where, say, to be eligible for wine of show or one of the top gongs? You have to have that status.
Speaker 1:Why not Now? It probably won't be 2026, but why not?
Speaker 2:I love that. This is a fun one, if you could add and this is kind of on the same kind of level as of thinking there's so much fun stuff happening in wine that is outside of the traditional I'm always thinking of like random things that you could put in a wine show. Is there anything outside of the box that you just think, oh my god, I would love to see that in the wine show. Maybe you can't figure out logistically how it would work, but what? I would love to see that in the wine show. Maybe you can't figure out logistically how it would work, but what would you love to see?
Speaker 1:Well, sustainability is one of the areas that I thought about when I saw this question, but we're constantly trying to say how do we get to a position where we champion new things? For me, low and no alcohol is an area, so we had a class on our show and this year we got a silver medal. Last year we got a bronze medal, so we haven't quite got the stage where our wines won gold medal. But again, our aim is about champion excellence and giving these producers an opportunity to put their wines up against their competitors set and say where are they going, where what's happening? And the good thing in that circumstance is every year we're seeing more and more of the wines get higher marks and hopefully it means the breed is getting better.
Speaker 2:Are judges briefed to judge low and no alcohols with a different mindset or a different scale in mind, or are they genuinely putting them against full alcohol wines?
Speaker 1:So they judge separately, as a separate class, and the judges know that they are no and low alcohol wines, but they are told to judge it using the same criteria and the same points scoring system as hard wines and that's why it's probably taken a few years to quite right. So again, I hope it gets better.
Speaker 2:I think it's an important category Did you say there's been a silver?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Oh well, that's impressive.
Speaker 1:Yes, if they're putting it up again yeah. So good luck to them and again, I'll be very happy the year or the day that we present a gold medal and a trophy in that class.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that'll be a headline. All right, I think we might move on to some of our listener questions. Yeah, so this one was a really good question, because sometimes you get in industry brain and you forget that people don't know this, so I thought this was a great one for anyone at home that doesn't know the answer to this one Do wineries pay to be featured in wine shows or are organisers going out and researching options themselves and then offering spots in the show?
Speaker 1:So the answer is that you have to pay an entry fee to get into the show and that covers the cost of us accommodating the judges, putting on the show, organising all that. But what I will say is that there is absolutely no favouritism. The integrity of the show is absolutely critical to us. So it's so much so that when we judge the trophy day, only the chair of judges finds the results. So when we announced the awards two and a half weeks later, it was when the judges. It was the first time they found out which particular wines had won those trophies. They're all served blind and if a judge is involved with a tasting where their company's wines are involved, they must fill out a conflict of interest and they aren't able to judge the trophy wine. So the integrity of the show is absolutely critical and I will say proudly that the Sydney Royal show is absolutely. The integrity is absolutely there.
Speaker 2:If we kind of push it a step further, though, does it restrict smaller wineries from entering? Like can you, in general terms, you know, is the entry fee significant? Is it only massive wineries that are able to enter all these shows, or is it just kind of a small amount?
Speaker 1:Look and again I can say it because I now work for a small or medium-sized wine company you've got to judge which shows you enter and how many entries you get in, because if you enter every wine to every show, that's going to cost you a little bit of money. But the answer is the wines that are on the bench are absolutely blind and no one can tell where they come from. They come from a big company or a little company and, being a small company, I want to show the wines in the shows that I think are important to to our company, but also the wines that I think represent the best wines that we can possibly make. And so in some ways there is a small, there's a cost of the tax to it, but I think it's not prohibited for even the smallest companies. And again, we're always delighted when we see a small company come through and win the big awards and get excited.
Speaker 2:And so maybe that means that, like gold, has integrity on its own. But if you see a big, blanket statement saying we're the winery that's received the most amount of like medals in total in Australia this year, then perhaps they have a lot of money and have just answered every show.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's probably right Not that I haven't seen that exact example, so I'm not pointing at anyone, but that might be a way to think about it. This is a good question from Nikki. What happens when judges don't agree? Are there fights around the table, and is it awkward if they're in close quarters?
Speaker 1:So we love it when judges disagree and have a good discussion. So what tends to happen is the judges will sit down as a group, so there'll be five judges in that panel. They'll look through, let's say, 30 to 40 wines and then they'll come back to the table once all the scores are locked in and say let's talk about this particular wine, and one judge might say I'm giving it a gold medal, and another judge says it's a silver medal and another judge says it's a bronze medal. Then they have a discussion and if they feel as though that wine is potentially of the quality where it could win a gold or a silver medal, they'll bring it back a second time and have a look at it a second time, completely random. So again, they won't know that it's even that sample number and they'll have a look at it. The next thing that happens is when they eventually award those gold medals, the chair of judges, who is looking after 31 judges or 30 other judges during the course of those four days, will come around and taste all those wines that get pushed forward as gold medals. So his or her role is to make sure that, if there's a debate, that the debate is a rational one and that the wines that get pushed forward as gold medals represent really those outstanding wines in each areas.
Speaker 1:And there was a great example in this year's show where we had a beautiful set of Rieslings that were up for the Riesling trophy and our chair of judges, monk Julius, really said I want to have a good debate and I want these to be close with the Riesling. This year there were two wines that were absolutely outstanding and the judges, when they put all their scores in, it was basically a tie between the top two wines, between the judges and also the associate judges, and so Mike had to really say, okay, these two wines are beautiful in their own ways, but how do we pick a wine that was particularly good? And in the end they chose that Tasmanian Devastorna resolution recently and it was a terrific while, but it's a good process.
Speaker 2:Do you think that it sounds like the retasting and the blind kind of nature of it means that you're avoiding this? But is it ever the case that the loudest voice or the biggest voice in the room just gets to like fight their way into all of their ones? They want winning.
Speaker 1:Look, I think there's a potential for that, mel, but again the way that. So we now have very good record keeping and we can do a lot of statistical analysis over judges and say this one, where did they put it and how did that process go? And also, in choosing a chair of judges for the show and indeed the panel chairs, we want to choose people who are good communicators, not a-holes. Yes, that's right. And again, I think there's very much a sort of a no-dickhead policy in choosing judges and panel chairs for all these capital city wine chairs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, oh, that sounds great. I think to wrap up is we've spoken about some amazing wines here today and we've partnered with you to actually give away a couple of tickets. So the Grape Grain and Graze Festival. I have since looked into this and it looks amazing. Can you tell us about it?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm so excited about it. Again, one of the challenges we've had historically is how do we get the consumers involved in what happens at the Sydney Royal Wine Show and the Sydney Beer Show and the Sydney Royal Spirit Show and indeed some fine food. So we invented this day called the the Sydney Royal Spirit Show, and indeed some fine food. So we invented this day called the Great Grain and Graze, which is on the 20th of September, and we'll get 1,000, hopefully a bit more than 1,000 people into a room where we have access to every single wine at Wanamera, in this case at the Sydney Royal Wine Show. So you get to try to those wines. We also have a special area where the trophy wines are served. We do masterclasses on various areas of wine. You get to taste some beers, you get to taste some beautiful, award-winning food. So it's a terrific day and again, it's a real opportunity, I think, for those interested people to really have a look and see what the shows do, but also to try some incredibly good wines all in one place.
Speaker 2:Angus, that's crazy. Like I cannot believe that that is something that people can do Like absolutely bonkers, and this close to booking a flight to Sydney. So how does it work? You're not getting the wineries in to pour their own wines, or do you have like one person serving Chardonnay or like, how did yeah, look, we've thought about it.
Speaker 1:So it's too difficult to get all the winemakers in. There'd be too many people in the room. So what we have is we have a team of people who are involved with the RAS all who have their RSA, who are responsible for pouring the wines to the consumers during the day. Then we have a team of experts, so we might bring some winemakers in, or a journalist or an educator to come and do the masterclasses so that people can see what's going on in that particular area.
Speaker 2:That's really cool and I think, like some wine festivals, I love going and I love meeting. There is something really lovely about meeting winemakers and producers and talking to the people behind it. But there would be something so cool because when you do that right, you're tasting so many different things at one stand. You go in the next stand and you're kind of like resetting what did that Chardonnay taste like again. Like actually being able to taste like for like all next to each other and kind of experience it in the way the judges did is very cool.
Speaker 1:I think it's super and if I could give anyone who's coming along some advice is pick a thing. You know, if you want to try Semillon, do a bracket of Semillon, have a look at that. And then, if you want to have a look at Chardonnay or Riesling or whatever it is, because there's a lot of wines there it's a long day, do it responsibly, but it's such a great opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to that point. Do you get more like interested, educated people who are still upright at the end of the day, or do you still get a lot of boozers?
Speaker 1:Oh look, generally we get interested upright people during the course of the day. We have lots of spittoons, we have quite a bit of food, but everyone's got to be responsible for their own behavior up to a point, and again it's a lovely day, so there are people who walk away with a smile on their face, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:I love it. Okay, so we are giving away two tickets. Make sure you check out um the Instagram of. You can find it on wine with mega mel Instagram. You can also find it on Royal Agricultural Society, new South Wales. That's it literally. I guess when I was doing this Instagram real, I got stuck tongue tied on that every single time. Reel Agricultural Society of New South Wales.
Speaker 2:So, both of us have the reel on our Instagram. Literally all you have to do is go in, make sure you're following both and tag who you'd take with you if you want to win those tickets. If you're not in Sydney or not in a position to get to Sydney to try and get those tickets, we're also giving away the four wines that Megan and I tasted in the last episode, so you can still win those if you check out the post, angus. Thank you so much for joining us. That was so good to get insight behind the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you, it's been an absolute pleasure. I loved your previous podcasts and podcasts in general. So pleasure.
Speaker 2:I loved your previous podcasts and podcasts in general so well done and, again, I hope people enjoyed it awesome. Thank you, is there? Is there anything else you want to shout out before we wrap it up?
Speaker 1:oh look, I love the way that um this show and our show in particular, sydney royal, also um helps bring that next generation of people through into the wine industry.
Speaker 1:So we we raise a little bit of money and we give away. This year we gave away nine scholarships to people and they're either studying wine or they want to do their advanced wine assessment course or viticulture course or university course. So again, I think it's really important that an organisation like the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales gives back to those people who are coming into the industry and again, the wine industry is a bit challenging at the moment. So it gives. I mean I feel very proud to be able to give away, to have discussions with nine people and say, look, we're going to fund you into doing something that's going to hopefully enhance your career. And the lovely thing this year is we then had of all our judges. I asked anyone who'd won this fellowship through the RAS put their hand up and there were about four hands that went up. And again I think we've contributed in some way to the enhancement of these people's life and I like that.
Speaker 2:Not to drag it out after I've wrapped it up, but it's a great point because if you think about in like the world of business, we were finding that internships were really negatively affecting lower socioeconomic because people who still lived at home with mum and dad or people who could afford to not have a part-time job and just head off and go work for free in their holidays, they were getting ahead and getting more experience. And the law actually changed in Australia like 10 years ago or something. So now you have to pay interns and, in a way, higher socioeconomic or people who work for bigger companies who have the company supporting them may, in the past, have been what made up those judges. So having those systems to support a broader range of people coming in, that's really really cool.
Speaker 1:Couldn't agree with you more, and again, it makes me proud to be part of the organisation and to do things like this unreal.
Speaker 2:Well, good on you, angus. Um, absolutely love what you do and best of luck with the festival. You'll uh, you'll have to pop over and say hi to the winner of the competition, but um, have a great afternoon and we'll talk to you soon thanks, mel, pleasure being here.
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