My Mead contest entry results

[MightyMosin]

I entered two different contests this year. One contest was to my State Fair and it was a BJCP contest. The other was a local County Fair and it uses a different scoring system focused more on wine.

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The BJCP scored contest had two entries. These were a Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon Pyment.

Pinot Noir entry
This was evaluated by two judges which gave overall scores of 25 & 28 for a final score of 26.. That range indicates that is was "good" but misses the mark on style and/or moderate flaws. The main detracting comment was to reduce barrel aging time to reduce the tannin. The 2nd judges more descriptive comment was: "A good pyment! The mead presents very well. The mead would be much better with less time on oak."
I don't necessarily disagree with that as I had intended to get it out of the barrel sooner but life happens.

Cabernet Sauvignon entry
This was also evaluated by two judges which gave overall scores of 29 & 33 for a final score of 31. That range indicates that is was "very good" and generally within style parameters, minor flaws. The main comments were related to honey flavor. The first was "more honey please" and the other was "A very good pyment! The mead presents beautifully with ruby hilights. The mead does not present the raspberry honey as expoected."
I think this is a case of where I may have done a bit better if I didn't disclose the type of honey as the judge was searching for that flavor, which is really subtle underneath a Cab Sauv flavor.

For my first BJCP contest I think the scores were decent and provide some direction on bettering the mead.

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The County scored contest states that each wine is judged “double blind” on a 20-point UC Davis's 20-point Judging Sheets. This contest was primarily a wine competition with a mead portion as part of it. I submitted three to this contest and each entry had three judges taste.

Pinot Noir entry
The judges scored this as 20, 19, 19. The comments were all positive.



Cabernet Sauvignon entry
The judges scored this as 20, 20,20.The comments were all extremely positive.

Waterless Melomel entry
The judges scored this as 19, 19.5, 20. The comments were all positive and I was happy that the acidity and sweetness was considered balanced. There was lots of acidic pucker at SG of 1.020 before I back sweetened it.

All three were considered Double Gold in the judging
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The pyments went to both contests and it is interesting to see how they did differently. All in all I think they are quality meads and I'll likely consider doing some other contests in the future.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Congrats!

 

[MightyMosin]

Thank you.

 

[Dan O]

Congratulations on your entries. I hope to enter a contest sometime soon.

 

[fluketamer]

congrats. thats very impressive. i am under the impression that my beer is decent enough to enter a contest but its prolly all in my head. the only unbiased opinion i have is that my friends all say its really good. about a third drink bmc, a third are craft beer drinkers and a third dont drink beer regularly.
i may be brave enough to enter the blue ribbon town fair in the fall but they usually have only one or none beer entries so at least i will likely win first place. lol.
i know thats not a great bar to pass but at least i will have a non friend try it. and hopefully get some feed back other than "can i have another."

 

[MightyMosin]

I wanted to share with all of you the three scoring sheets of the mead that did the best. I think the scoring format is of interest.
I have redacted out a few things to try and keep it non identifying.