{"id":24555,"date":"2020-11-05T13:52:28","date_gmt":"2020-11-05T13:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=24555"},"modified":"2020-11-05T13:52:28","modified_gmt":"2020-11-05T13:52:28","slug":"co-chairing-at-the-international-wine-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/uncategorized\/co-chairing-at-the-international-wine-challenge","title":{"rendered":"Co-chairing at the International Wine Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s Thursday. Day five of judging at the International Wine Challenge<\/a>. This year, because of the Covid situation, we\u2019ve had to change things a bit. Sadly we are missing the international judges this year, which is a big loss, because they bring a lot of perspective to proceedings. And teams are down from five to three, to enable the appropriate spacing. We\u2019ve also moved to two large rooms from one \u2013 again, for spacing reasons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The panels are staying the same each day, too \u2013 one of the highlights of judging here was tasting with different people each day. I used to really enjoy being a panel chair largely because of this. Your team each day might include one or two people you knew, but also people you\u2019d never judged with before. Tuckman\u2019s stages of group development were evident \u2013 usually by mid-morning you\u2019d got through to the performing stage (see here<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My job for the last few years has been as a co-chair. There are six of us, and our job is to act as moderators. We retaste each flight as it comes off the floor, and look at the verdict delivered by the panel. One co-chair will do the first pass, and mark any proposed changes to the panel\u2019s score. A second co-chair will then look at any wines where a change has been suggested, and will agree or disagree with the change. Any change requires the agreement of two co-chairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We\ndon\u2019t make changes for the sake of it. The panels have spent a good while\ndeliberating, so we use the medical principal of primum non nocere<\/em>\n(above all, do no harm). The last thing we want to do it mess up some\nfundamentally good results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Panels\nare important. Research shows that when it comes to making decisions, two heads\nseem to be better than one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\njudging wine is difficult. It\u2019s not as simple as saying, how much do I like\nthis wine? Experience and skill helps, and being able to taste well in a\ncompetition setting is quite a talent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We find that the panels do a great job most of the time. We\nhave a feedback process that looks to promote the best judges, and sometimes we\nhave to let judges go (although this might be because of their interpersonal\nskills in working as a team as much as their tasting ability).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But sometimes in our co-chairing we find a flight that has\nbeen scored meanly, or praised excessively. Our job is to have the sort of perspective\n\u2013 from tasting everything \u2013 that we can even things out. And some wines get missed:\nreal gems that have somehow not been spotted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any competition is judged by the results, not the process. We\nwant the best wines to win. We think for the sake of producers who have paid to\nenter their wines, they deserve every chance, and the safety net of the co-chair\nprocess really does help make this happen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After today, we have one more day of judging, and then a much-needed weekend off, before trophies on Monday and Tuesday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reminder: this blog is irregularly updated, but there are daily updates on the main wineanorak site<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Thursday. Day five of judging at the International Wine Challenge. This year, because of the Covid situation, we\u2019ve had to change things a bit. Sadly we are missing the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24555"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24559,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24555\/revisions\/24559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}