Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/40615
WINE COMPETITIONS Scene At: International Eastern Wine Competition Annual 'eastern' wine competition takes a Sonoma County detour his year's International Eastern Wine Com- petition (IEWC) featured a unique twist: It was held on the West Coast. The 35th annual competition organized by Vineyard & Winery Management (V&WM) took place June 14-15, 2011 at Santa Rosa Junior College's Shone Farm, located in California's Russian River Valley AVA. In previous years, the competition was held in New York's Finger Lakes region. The reason for the switch was one famil- iar to many small wineries across the United States: wine shipping restrictions. New York state laws require wines from outside the state to be shipped to a local distributor, and this year, V&WM's usual distributor was not available to accept IEWC deliveries. "Instead of shipping wines to New York," explained IEWC chairman Linda Murphy, "we moved the judging, and judges, to California, where V&WM has a crack competition crew in place, and there are no restrictions on shipping wine across state lines." In addition to wines from the eastern United States and the Midwest, IEWC evaluates wines from the western U.S., Canada and beyond. The competition also includes the Riesling Champi- onship, which honors the best Riesling of each year's IEWC. The 2011 competition included nearly 1,400 entries, with 54 double gold, 81 gold, 360 silver and 365 bronze medals awarded by a team of pro- fessional wine judges from across the country. "It was no surprise that the East and Midwest did extremely well in the competition," Murphy 1 72 VINEYARD & WINERY MANAGEMENT SEPT - OCT 2011 WWW.VWM-ONLINE.COM 2 4 3