Mead Judging at the New Mexico State Fair
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Geoff Reeves

A couple of months ago Gordon, Mike, Laure, and I went down to Albuquerque to
judge meads at the New Mexico State Fair. This year meads were judged alongside
wines rather than beers. The weekend before we had judged beers (hey, somebody
has to do it) and the contrast between the two events was interesting enough
that we decided it might be of interest to our fellow Atom Mashers.

You've probably judged beers at an Atom Masher meeting or possibly at an
"AHA Sanctioned Competition" like the State Fair or Spring Thing. The AHA
puts a big emphasis on beer style. Mead is considered by the AHA to be a
"style" of beer and is judged in pretty much the same way. Beer is judged
on a 50 point scale divided among appearance, aroma, flavor, body, and
"drinkability". The stress in awarding points is always on the phrase "as
appropriate for style." In other words chocolate malt may be appropriate
in a porter but it is totally inappropriate in a pilsner. The emphasis is
on ingredients and brewing technique. The rationale behind this approach is
that you learn more about brewing beer if you try to reproduce a particular
type of beer than you do in an anything-goes approach.

The wine judges (hosted by the Wine & Vine Society) uses a completely different
approach. Wine, and this year mead, is judged using the so-called "Hedonic
Scale". [Could you ask for a better name?] The scale is 1 to 10 points
based almost exclusively on how much you like it. All the wines/meads in a
"flight" are served at once and can be compared side-by-side. You judge all the
wines/meads and score them before anyone talks about any of their impressions.

In many ways this approach makes more sense for wine than the AHA approach.
Style is not so much of an issue. Varietal wines are defined by the variety
of grapes that are used. If you use Cabernet grapes your wine is a Cabernet
regardless of what it tastes like. Wines are frequently blended from several
fermentations and possibly several different years. Much of the art of wine
making is in combining these flavors. That's one of the reasons there is
such an emphasis on "complexity".

In addition to scoring the wines/meads you rank them within the flight.
Oddly it's OK for a lower-scoring wine to rank higher than a higher-scoring
wine if you like. This is also a big difference. Unlike beer judging the
emphasis for the judges is not to give accurate and helpful comments to the
brewer and to award an appropriate overall score. Rather the emphasis is
in picking numbers 1, 2, and 3 and in deciding who gets medals. Of course
there are huge financial implications for the commercial brewers.

So, how do the two judging systems work for meads? The AHA divides meads
into classes: mead with apples, mead with grapes, mead with other fruits,
mead with spices, and meads with fruit and spices. In addition they can be
still or sparkling varieties of each. We felt very handicapped at the wine
judging because all meads were judged side-by-side and because we never knew
what the ingredients of the mead were. When judging a cherry-ginger mead
an AHA judge asks herself "how well does this mead express honey, ginger,
and cherries?" The wine judge asks himself "how well do these flavors
combine to make a whole?" If the mead had just a hint of ginger it might
not score as well using the AHA standards. On the other hand what if you
are comparing a mead made with spicy desert honey to a mead made by actually
adding spices. Obviously you can get more spice character by adding spices
if that's what you want. But this misses the delight of getting character
out of the honey alone.

The wine competition organizers were new to mead. I'm sure they will develop
modifications to how meads are judged (like listing ingredients). Most of the
wine judges were quite excited about having meads join the competition. They
must have been. Gordon's orange blossom honey took best of show in the
amateur division (in spite of the fact that Mike Hall's Apricot mead was
judged best mead !?)

So, what's the bottom line?  There are obvious advantages and disadvantages
to both approaches to judging. The advantage to the AHA approach is that
it really has taught a generation of homebrewers to brew better beer. The
available ingredients have improved too; because homebrewers demanded
that just-exactly-the-right yeast to reproduce the unbelievable Scottish
Ale they had in Inverness. For some this is just too anal and scientific
and takes all the fun and magic out of brewing. There's truth in that too.
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale wasn't a "style" ten years ago. Or what about Celis
Wit? If it weren't a style of its own the AHA would frown on the dubious
practice of adding orange peal to wheat beer!

We all felt we should continue judging beers at our club meetings using the
AHA guidelines. In part because it teaches people how to judge at bigger
competitions but mostly because it teaches people about brewing beer. And
the better beer club members brew the better beer we get to drink. On the
other hand some "beers" like mead, cider, or spiced beer might benefit from
adopting some of the wine judges techniques and we might consider a hybrid
approach for the "Holiday Beer" competition in January.