San Francisco names best spirits while New York launches competing competition

March 26, 3:28 PMChicago Drinks ExaminerCharles Cowdery

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Spirits writer Anthony Dias Blue

The 2009 San Francisco World Spirits Competition (SFWSC) was last weekend. You can read all about it here.

The SFWSC is the creation of Anthony Dias Blue (who kind of looks like me, see picture) and F. Paul Pacult (who doesn't). They're both knock-around guys who essentially do what I do (drink stuff and write about it), so I genuinely admire their entrepreneurship.

Today I received an announcement about a new spirits competition that will have its debut in June in New York. It is called the New York Spirits Competition and will be held in conjunction with The Bar Show at the Javits Center. The people behind this one are also writers, Adam Levy and Dori Bryant. Details are here.

Anybody who has read my book knows how I feel about ratings and competitions. Even though I have been a judge for WHISKY Magazine and the American Distilling Institute (ADI), and many local bartender competitions, I don’t place much stock in the results. It’s not because I think we do a bad job of deciding what’s best. It’s because I consider the whole concept of “best” dubious.

The fundamental problem is that ratings and competitions are entirely subjective and often, no matter how they try to arrange the categories, you have to compare apples to oranges. Even when the styles are close, you still have the basic problem that what I like may not be what you like.

To pretend that the subjective opinions of a group of people, even experts, can be averaged out and thereby made objective is, what? Delusional?

Jim Murray and I have talked about this and while he concedes the basic point, his counter is that we have an obligation to give consumers guidance. I recently heard from Deborah Parker Wong, who said more or less the same thing.

In all of the competitions in which I have participated, the process was as good and fair as we could make it -- everything was judged blind, of course -- but there are always unintended consequences and, at the end of the day, after eliminating the clearly bad entrants, picking winners at random wouldn't be much less meaningful.

For example, I feel sorry for someone like Rick Wasmund, who is very innovative, but in a rank of more ordinary spirits his stuff tastes odd and not necessarily in a good way. How do you judge something that is unique?

I have also noticed that when you taste a lot of different products something that tastes a little different (though not as different as Wasmund's) will stick out and get extra points. Does that really make it the best?

Yet I know I’m swimming against the tide here. We live in a world of top ten lists and the centerpiece of most lifestyle journalism is the quest for the best burger or the best pizza, and when such accolades are awarded, the places or products that receive them get a big spike in business. Many people believe in the myth of "the best," and also indulge in the shortcut of letting someone else tell them what it is.