| 14th CONCORSO ENOLOGICO INTERNAZIONALE - The Jury Members | | | | By: Remie Law |  Page 1 of 4 next >> |
14th CONCORSO ENOLOGICO INTERNAZIONALE
40th VINITALY, Verona-Italy
28 March – 02 April 2006
a report of the proceedings by a member of the JURY from Singapore
(with photos see http://www.happyvines.com/VinItaly06)
SAME STROKES : DIFFERENT FOLKS
This Competition brings together a whole host of personalities, nationalities and types into ONE hotel and ONE venue. It offers great opportunity to interact or not. To establish new friendships and deepen or strengthen old ones or not. It is an amalgamation of cultures but only one culture is foremost - the culture of WINE that binds all participants. We talk about everything under the sun but ultimately the subject of WINE tend to crop up. "Oh, I just tasted this wonderful PX ........ 1941, no less!!!" "Ugh! So much wood and no fruit in some of these wines!" "I find it so difficult to taste all those sweet wines ......... then, there are those awful Roses, ...... wish they would put in some serious effort with this style!" "The last flight made my day. I had a wonderful flight of old vintage reds that were simply delicious!" Such gems and lemons are found, day in and day out throughout this Competition.
What a wonderful way to spend time on your favourite beverage. It must be! For you to travel all the way to Verona and endure a strict and tight regime of tastings, full fledged lunches, back to tastings until 08:00pm, then, off to a full evening's social programme of wine drinking, social interaction, full-blown debates and full dinner menus to end at past midnight. Then, up again for a full breakfast needed to fortify you for the first morning session at 09:30am, sharp!! All this while, your teeth & tongue gets darker and darker coated with grapeskin extract, if you are not careful.
The main conductor of this orchestra of wine personalities is Dr. Guiseppe Martelli. His organisation of this Competition is like clockwork with typical Italian flair. Each morning, without fail, he greets all Jurors and thank them for being so punctually seated at their tasting desks. Then, he reads out the previous session's statistics as if we were all shorthand secretaries. This is done in Italian for the sake of all our Italian eonologists, then, promptly translated into English by his very able assistant for the rest of us.
So sorry if you do not understand either language. Apparently so, since we had someone asking for the Competition rules to be spelt out all over again, although he had a whole file-full left for him in his hotel room, upon his arrival. In prim & proper Italian, nevertheless, with a touch of indignation, Dr. Martelli repeated the whole Competition rules to the cohort, which was duly translated by his able assistant. The rest of us, who have done the dutiful, sat and twiddled our thumbs and the minutes ticked along, destroying Dr. Martelli's precise timings. Nevertheless, "If you have any further clarifications, please do not hesitate to contact me, here at my podium." ends Dr. Martelli.
More were yet to come.
Towards the end of the first flight on the first morning, the air-conditioning poured out sorrowfully, at the back of the tasting room. The second flight of the morning was cancelled and the cohort was sent back to the hotel for early lunch that was served, on-time, nonetheless.
Now, the sommeliers were on the roll. In precise fashion, left hand holding the concealed bottle sample, right hand neatly tucked against the small of their backs, they marched out of the preparation room that will make any soldier swoon with envy. "Prego." says Dr. Martelli, and each of the 21 sommeliers marched towards the first Juror and poured out a generous tasting portion of wine. Then, the next four until all are duly served. "Sommelier, Grazie." intoned Dr. Martelli, and they filed out to whence they came ready to retrieve the next bottle sample of the flight.
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