The artificially sweet taste of success

As many blog readers know, we make wine here at Woodhaven. Nothing commercial. It’s just a really fun hobby that typically produces about 150 bottles of free wine each year. Free if you ignore the costs to buy the grapes and the bottles and the crusher and the press and the carboys and the chemicals and the oak chips and the corks and the laser printing and the glue sticks. And apparently for some, the sucralose.

We recently received an email from the head of our local home winemaker’s club announcing the theme for the next meeting: “Bring your award winners!” By this, Homebrew Jim means we should bring wines we have entered in our local county fair that have won blue ribbons. Rob’s entered a number of his wines over the past three years and he’s done pretty well.

This past year, though, we got a little disillusioned by the whole experience. Some insider knowledge about how the amateur judging really works suggests that next year we’ll be finding a new contest. And by amateur, I do mean the judges and not what is being judged. It's OK; I can make these snarky comments since, well, I've been a wine judge for the past three years (and no, I don't judge Rob's wines. He's earned his patriotic display of awards all by himself). Nevertheless, Jim’s email confirms our decision to move on. I’ve got to him credit, though. He knows his judging audience and has learned to cater to their honed and truly sophisticated vinicultural tastes:

One of the real benefits of being in our group is getting feedback on wines; we benefited because several members thought our black raspberry wine was too dry for the County Fair so we sweetened it with Splenda and got a blue ribbon.

Imagine if they had used Sweet 'N Low!