Our results from the 36th Annual San Francisco International Wine Competition

There are so many exciting things happening right now at Clearwater Canyon! I’ll tell you a little story about one of those things…

Back in May we decided to enter a couple of wines in a little wine competition called the San Francisco International Wine Competition. This competition is the largest and most prestigious international wine competition in the United States. We chose to enter our 2014 Phinny Hill Carmenère and our 2013 Selway. About a month later we were given unexpected news: Our Carmenère received a Silver medal and our Selway received a Double Gold!

What’s the difference between a Gold and a Double Gold? In a wine competition like the San Francisco International, judging is done blind; meaning the wines are tasted without knowing what the specific wine is. They are only told what the grape varietal is. Judges are broken up into panels and given a number of wines to judge. They rate the wine by medal (Bronze, Silver or Gold). If all of the judges in the panel give the wine a Gold, then the wine receives a Double Gold.

In this specific competition, wines rated Gold and Double Gold are also scored on a 100 point scale. The Selway was rated 97 points! Upon finding this out, we were curious as to how that put us in the standing amongst other wines scored in the competition. For what seemed like weeks, we finally found out. Selway tied for 19th in the competition overall! That’s right. A wine made from grapes 100% grown in the Lewis-Clark Valley was placed in the top 20 wines in the world. Selway was the only Non-Bordeaux blend from the Northwest to receive a Double Gold.

For Idaho wine skeptics, this is further proof that our wines can stand up against wines from around the globe!

For a complete list of this year’s results, click here.