This year I was fortunate enough to be an associate judge at the Mediterranean Wine Show here in Toowoomba. This was my first time and I found it a very rewarding & educational experience. However the one particular 'class' of wines which I found most difficult to judge was the Pinot Gris/Grigio class.  I had read James Halliday's statements "judging this class is like judging different shades of white". I couldn't agree with him more! We had about 15 different entries to distinguish & they seemed to have the variability of a box of matches.

I have drunk both Gris & Grigio a number of times before & found them to be somewhat bland & uninteresting. This is more of a personal preference statement & hardly something you would base your show judging on. Nevertheless, I thought that in my wine drinking time I just hadn't come across some of the better quality drops yet. But a week after the wine show when I was notified of which wineries had entered the Mediterranean Wine Show that year I was blown away. There were some very big interstate wineries in the mix who had been making wines for a very very long time. These people who would have access to very good fruit and there would be no question about their winemaking skill. I had been scoring some quality Pinot Gris & Pinot Grigio all along.

For me now, I have stopped looking for the Holy Grail. Although one of my wine show companions said he would show me a great Australian Pinot Gris, I am happy to wait for that day. I now understand that this is all Pinot Gris & Pinot Grigio are: Certainly clean and crisp, probably refreshing after mowing the lawn, but for me, lacking in pizzazz. If I wanted that I would still reach for a Riesling. If Pinot Gris is the next big thing in white wine, I just don’t get it?!  -Andrew