Double-Gold Medal at SFCWC!
One last moment in the spotlight for our 2021 Eclipse Malbec
Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it! ~ Davy Crockett
Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame. ~ Robert Burns
Dionysus willing, a harbinger of wines to come
If, by chance, you’re a subscriber to the San Francisco Chronicle you’ll notice in today’s paper a special section on the 2025 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, which includes a listing of award-winning wines Gold Medal and higher.
And yep, we’re in it!
The SFCWC is considered the most prestigious commercial wine competition in North America, engaging the best winemakers from the United States, Canada and Mexico. The 2025 competition attracted nearly 5,500 different wines from 950+ wineries.
The reality is that most of the wines submitted are damn good, and about 85% of them eventually won a medal. And why shouldn’t they? The hassle factor and sheer expense of entering a wine (the $80 fee per entry, the four sample bottles required for each entry, the need for careful packaging, and the expensive shipping) certainly isn’t worth it if you don’t fully believe that your wine is good enough to medal in the first place. Not a lot of plonk being poured down the drain in this competition.
The judging is blind with 50 experts in the wine industry convening in three-judge or five-judge panels to evaluate each wine. Based on the overall total of points earned (from all three or all five judges on a panel) for such attributes as appearance and color, aroma and bouquet, acidity and flavor—if the score is high enough the wine can earn a Bronze, Silver or Gold medal.
If all the judges on the panel unanimously give the wine enough points for a Gold medal it is awarded a Double-Gold. Only about 8% of the wines entered in 2025 won a Double-Gold. Beyond that, the very highest score earned in each specific category is awarded Best of Class, and all of those compete for the Sweepstakes Award (Best of Show) which is voted on by all 50 judges and awarded to about 10 wines representing the very finest in broad categories like Best Red Wine, Best Sparkling Wine or Best White Wine.
It certainly goes without saying that I’m over the moon (ha!) with the success of our 2021 Eclipse Malbec! I sure wish I’d made two or three times as much of it, as awards of this stature have a very positive effect on sales. When we won a Double-Gold and Best of Class in the Sonoma Harvest Fair for our 2022 Vino Tinto Rústico we promptly sold 14 cases of wine at Bottle Barn, and they came to us for the order. But alas, we’ve been sold out of the 2021 Eclipse Malbec for quite a while due to it’s amazing back story—so now it’s just down to bragging rights!
However, we earned (and learned) a lot more from the 2025 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition than just our breakout success with the Eclipse Malbec. We had entered six other wines as part of our overall effort of trying to see just where we stood when compared with the best wines out there. About 45% of the wines entered won a Silver Medal. We obviously stood firmly in that group.
Sure, it’s all subjective. And you can easily rationalize your results, both good and bad. But at the end of the day, it’s just a handful of good people who don’t know you, and can’t see whose wine it is they’re judging, trying to give as honest of an opinion as possible. And that’s worth its weight in gold—even if you might get paid in silver or bronze, or maybe even stiffed!
As I recently quipped to a friend of mine not given to gratuitous praise, but who nonetheless was relaying some very positive comments he had received on a bottle of my wine at a recent dinner party, “You know, it’s funny, but I seem to float between total elation and a crippling crisis of confidence with my wines. It’s an anxiety that will probably never completely go away, but genuine feedback is a salve that soothes.”
And that dear reader pretty much sums up winemaking. You’re constantly wrestling with a living thing, trying to coax out its very best attributes without compromising its singularity. Damn right I need some feedback!