The San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition held in Cloverdale in early January, 2019 will actually be the 36th annual competition event hosted by the Cloverdale Citrus Fair. The San Francisco Chronicle received the naming rights starting in 2001 which makes the wine competition 19 years with the San Francisco Chronicle. The actual competition is not open to the public.
The 2019 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition will have over 6,800 wine entries from over 1,130 wineries from the United States, Canada, and Mexico. These numbers make the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition the largest wine competition in North America.
There will be over 65 professional wine judges representing media, trade, winemaking, education, and restaurant/hospitality industries. A third of the judges are from out of state (New York, Indiana, Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Washington, Arkansas, and others), a third from Southern California, and the last third from Northern California. We will once again have a wine buyer from our Presenting Sponsor, BevMo!
One of our esteemed judges is hailing from Bentonville, Arkansas… Yep! The head wine buyer from Wal Mart will be joining us!
There will be over 155 volunteers from throughout Sonoma County that staff the annual wine competition in Cloverdale.
Not only the judges will evaluate nearly 6,800 wines over the week period but they will collectively consume over 750 loaves of bread, twelve cases of Gruber olives, twenty five pounds of rare roast beef, fifteen cases of sparkling/regular bottled water along with eating breakfast, lunch and dinner every day!
The SFCWC judges will be hosted by the Yorkville Highlands Growers & Vintners for a social reception at the Cloverdale Arts Alliance Center at 4:30 PM with dinner afterwards at Cloverdale’s Trading Post on Tuesday, January 8th. The SFCWC Official Judges Dinner will be hosted by Coyote Sonoma in Healdsburg at 5:15 PM (Social) on Wednesday evening, January 9th.
The official SFCWC wine award results will be made available on www.sfgate.com at 3:00 PM on Friday, January 11th, and immediately afterwards on www.winejudging.com.
The San Francisco Chronicle Official Wine Awards Special Section will be published in the Sunday, February 10th Food and Wine Section of the San Francisco Chronicle, readership of more than 1.7 million, and SF GATE, 30 million unique users each month.
The 2019 San Francisco Chronicle Public Tasting will be at the Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center on Saturday, February 16th from 1-4 PM. Tickets are available at www.winejudging.com.
