KEY POINTS:
Another New Zealand wine competition has been tainted with controversy, this time over a potential conflict of interest.
The chief judge at the 2007 Hawkes Bay Wine Awards announced that he had presided over a competition that had given the top prize to his own company.
Tony Bish,
winemaker for Sacred Hill, owns the Gunn Estate label that won the Champion Wine trophy with its 2006 Skeetfield Chardonnay.
Bish said that he was not involved in any way during the competition judging that may have influenced the final result.
As a judge he enforces the standards by which the wines are judged, and is available for making decisions when judges' opinions are split over any wine.
It is just a year since Brent Marris, the chief judge at the Air New Zealand Wine Awards, the country's top wine competition, was forced to resign after his Wither Hills competition wines were found to be different to those sold to the public.
Bish said this week the possibility of a conflict of interest was discussed before the competition and steps were taken to avoid it. Prior to the competition, Bish said the competition was eager to avoid any controversy, especially after the Wither Hills affair.
However, he claims that Gunn Estate wines, while the brand is 100 per cent owned by Sacred Hill, is not, technically, a Sacred Hill wine.
"We decided to pull out all our Sacred Hill wines, but Denis Gunn [of Gunn Estate] grows his own grapes and makes all the calls on his wine, so while we own them, it is really his wine."
But the winner of viticulturist of the year award is made automatically to the person responsible for growing the grapes that make the champion wine. This year the winner was Jo McGonigal, head viticulturist for Sacred Hill.
After having reviewed the event Bish said he believed he was in no way compromised, an opinion that the panel leader, Te Mata Estate winemaker, Peter Cowley agreed with. "It was a good wine, no doubt about it. And Tony had no input into the results at all," he said.
The other judges on the panel were Wellington critic, Geoff Kelly and Australian judge, Philip Rich, and they were in agreement on the standard of the Gunn Estate wine.
Mr Cowley was surprised to learn that the wine, which was tasted "blind" or unknown to the judges, was from the Sacred Hill portfolio. "It was pretty silly for them to put the wine in. Everybody has been talking about the need to be seen to be straight, and Sacred Hill made a point of saying they were not putting any wine in. I really don't know why they did [enter the Gunn Estate wine]," he said.