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SALES & MARKETING and staff for the competition, equipment rental, judging supplies, medals, credit card fees, security for the event, marketing and public relations. The competition also pays for judges' fees (an honorarium of $100 per judging day), plus airfare, ground transportation, accommodations and all meals during the competition. "I always have to smile when I see bloggers talking about competitions as money machines." —Rebecca Murphy, founder, Dallas Morning News Wine Competition Big business The San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition bills itself as the largest wine contest in the United States, and with good reason: The annual judging draws 5,000 entries each year at a cost of $20 per brand and $65 per wine entered. Winners are invited to pour at a public tasting held in San Francisco, tickets for which sell for between $50 and $80. Wineries choosing to participate in the event must reserve a table for $100, plus the cost of wine, transportation and staffing. Based on data collected by Wines & Vines, North American wine competitions receive more than 43,800 combined entries each year, with participation fees totaling more than $2.9 million. The business is big overseas, too: In 2012 the Decanter World Wine Awards judged more than 14,000 wines with entry fees starting at $206 (USD), for a total of at least $2.9 million (though the actual total is much more because entry fees are higher for samples sent from outside the U.K. and wineries that don't register online). It takes a village Several checks exist to make sure labels match entry forms and duplicate bottles are marked accordingly at the Dallas Morning News Wine Competition. Judging for the California State Fair Wine Competition takes place in early June, but behind the scenes staff and volunteers begin working months earlier. "We don't start the day before," said wine competition coordinator Kem Pence. "It's the beginning of the year when we gear up and start soliciting wineries, and then we have our entries open in April and start receiving bottles in April and May." This year 2,625 wines entered the competition, which charges a $60 entry fee per wine, for a total of $157,500. Pence said 120 volunteers aid the staff of five and 72 judges during the three-day competition and the days (and in some cases months) leading up to it. According to Murphy of the Dallas Morning News Wine Competition, the lion's share of the work goes on behind the scenes. When wines are received at the warehouse, staff checks each label to make sure all four bottles are the same and that they match the entry information Judges watch as a computer program averages their scores to award a medal (or not) at the California State Fair Wine Competition in Sacramento, Calif. 100 W in e s & V i ne s january 20 14 submitted by the winery. "If they enter one vintage and send us another, we make sure they intended to do that," Murphy said. "We work very hard to make sure our information is accurate." In fact, Murphy has worked with Will and Calvin Goldring of Portland, Ore.based web and database development firm State33 to develop a web-based competition management system that includes online entry for wineries and a system for judging panels to input their scores. Once a wine wins gold, staffers check their database to make sure that the record matches the information on the wine label and that the photo on file is the correct one. Which contests to enter With the variety of wine competitions out there, it can be difficult to know which ones are worth the cost of admission— both in terms of entry fees and shipping bottles. According to Murphy, who also serves as manager of operations and logistics for the Sunset International Wine Competition, transparency is one of the most important elements in judging. "A winery should always try to find out whether the competition shares the code sheets with their judges," she said. Murphy explained that code sheets allow judges, once the judging stage is complete and the scores are locked in, to cross-reference their votes and notes with the list of wines once they are revealed. "I've judged at some competitions where they did not share that data. It shows the transparency of what's happening." Murphy added that it's important for wineries to know how much attention competitions pay to the details, from intake of wines to cataloging them to judge selection and disseminating information about the winners. "It's harder