Wine and a view: Mitchelton Winery hosts the Victorian Wine Show. Attendees can have a sip of wine and marvel at the winery’s vineyard.
Photo by
Faith Macale
Once a year for the past 40 years, local winemakers from all over Victoria have come together at Mitchelton Winery to compete for the best wine in the state.
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The Victorian Wine Show started in Seymour in the 1980s to shed light on the state’s wine industry.
Ron Holden has been a part of the show from the very start.
“We had our first wine show in ’81 or ’82 ... in Anzac Knitting Mills Hall,” Mr Holden said.
“We had 90-something entries.”
This year, there were 640 entries from wineries all over Victoria.
“It’s grown and changed, and a lot of things happened over the years,” he said.
“It’s come to the stage now where it’s internationally recognised.”
The Victorian Wine Show features different types of wine from local wineries, and last week, judges chose their favourites.
This year’s winners, which will be announced next month at a tasting and presentation day at Mitchelton Winery, may get the chance to exhibit their products at FOODEX 2024 in Japan, the largest food trade show in Asia.
Where it started: Ron Holden (right) has been a part of the Victorian Wine Show from the start. Geoff Shenfield (left) is the chair of the show’s committee.
Victorian Wine Show chairman Geoff Shenfield said entrants had to meet specific requirements.
“First and foremost thing, all the grapes used to make the wine must be grown in Victoria,” he said.
Because of the large number of entries, the show couldn’t classify all of them into a specific class.
These non-classified wines fell under the ‘alternative wine’ category.
“Once they (alternative wines) get to a certain point in the market, they’ll have their own class,” Mr Shenfield said.
Once entries were sorted and ready, it was time for the judges to deliberate.
For a decade, Takuya Kusuda has been judging international wine shows, specialising in wine and sake, a Japanese rice wine.
Going global: Takuya Kusuda has judged wine and sake for 10 years all over the world. He was this year’s international wine judge for the Victorian Wine Show.
This year, he was the Victorian Wine Show’s international guest judge.
When he judges wines, he said he constantly thought of Japanese food and how it would pair with wines and suit the palate of the Japanese market.
“Japanese market is very unique from any other country,” he said.
“Japanese food doesn’t use much oil ... that is a very critical point.”
Expert judgment: Wine judging at the Victorian Wine Show at Mitchelton Winery.
Mr Kusuda said his judging process also included a wine’s aftertaste.
“The most important thing is aftertaste,” he said.
It is because when a wine is opened, its taste will change when it is mixed with oxygen and allowed to ‘breathe’.
“Quality comes out on aftertaste,” Mr Kusuda said.
“For example, after 10 minutes, you poured wine — smell change, temperature change.
“The impression of attack changes, but the aftertaste is very stable.”
Mr Kusuda advises wine enthusiasts and budding wine judges to study wines’ faults using chemical products to see how they destroy flavour.
The Victorian Wine Show will announce winners on Thursday, November 9 at Mitchelton Winery.
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