KEY POINTS:
A New Zealand wine competition tainted with controversy over a potential conflict of interest has suffered fresh humiliation after it emerged that the competition director added up the scores incorrectly - and the award should have gone to yet another judge.
Step forward the real winner of the 2007 Hawkes Bay Wine Awards: wine judge Rod McDonald, who himself has a vested interest, for the trophy-winning wine was actually one of his - the Vidal 2005 Reserve Syrah.
Last week, Tony Bish, the chief judge at the awards, announced that he had presided over a competition that had given the top prize to his own company.
Mr Bish, winemaker for Sacred Hill, owns the Gunn Estate label that won the Champion Wine trophy with its 2006 Skeetfield Chardonnay. He did the noble thing yesterday and withdrew the wine.
But now the event's organisers have announced that the winner wasn't really the winner, and that the competition director had muddled up the scores.
The latest development means Gunn Estate 2006 Skeetfield Chardonnay did not win the trophy for the best wine in the show, and Mr Bish should never have been compromised in such a way.
While Mr McDonald no longer works for Vidals, he was the winemaker responsible for the company's 2005 vintage.
Mr McDonald said he did not believe there was a conflict of interest over his involvement as a judge and the Vidal wine winning the trophy.
"The wine was blended and bottled after I left," he said. "I didn't see the final wine in a commercial, finished state, and I didn't judge the Syrah section of the competition. I guess my attitude is that it is not really my wine at all and I didn't have any influence on it winning the trophy."
Director of the competition Nick Sage, of the Eastern Institute of Technology, agrees with Mr McDonald, believing that there was no "direct" conflict of interest.
"Rod was involved with the wine early on, but he was no longer employed when Vidals entered it," he says.
Because Mr McDonald had left Vidals, the actual winner was the company's present winemaker Hugh Crichton.
Michael Pyatt, chief executive of the Hawkes Bay A&P Society, said: "We would like to apologise for this mistake. It was an administrative error and we maintain full confidence in the awards."
Mr Sage noted: "The problem is, the New Zealand industry is fairly small and you are always going to have conflict of interest problems."
