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What is Winejudging.com?
Winejudging.com is the home of the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition (SFCWC), which it describes as the largest competition of American wines. The site serves two main audiences: wineries that enter the competition and consumers or trade buyers looking for award results.
What you'll find on the site
- Medal winner listings going back many years, including "Best of Class" results and current winners. These are the practical core of the site: if you want to know which wines took medals in a given year, this is where you look.
- Information for wineries, including entry details and competition categories, plus badge materials for 2026.
- Judge information: profiles of current judges, former judges, and related event details.
- News and commentary, such as Mike Dunne's Best of Class tasting notes and coverage of the North American Collegiate Wine Bowl.
- Event history and background, including ties to the Cloverdale Citrus Fair in Cloverdale, California.
How to use it
If you're a wine buyer or curious shopper, start with the medal winners section for the year you care about, then read the Best of Class notes to understand why particular wines stood out. If you make wine and are considering entering, the winery information pages outline categories and the entry process, and the judge profiles give a sense of who evaluates the wines.
A reasonable next step: browse the most recent Best of Class list and compare it with a prior year to see which producers appear repeatedly, since consistency across vintages is often more telling than a single medal. For broader context on the competition and its results, the San Francisco Chronicle is the publication behind it.
How do I enter my wine in the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition?
Enter through the competition's winery portal. On Winejudging.com, the entry path runs through Wineries → Information for Wineries, where you'll find the current competition's registration materials, badges and directors' contact address. Registration happens before judging; the 2026 competition is already decided (results and Best-of-Class tasting notes are posted), so a new entrant should be working toward the 2027 cycle.
What the entry process involves
- Register as a winery — you'll create or update a winery account and submit your contact and license details.
- Choose categories — wines are entered into specific varietal and style categories, listed under "Wine Judging Categories." Getting this right matters, because a wine judged in the wrong class competes against the wrong peers.
- Submit labels and paperwork — expect to supply label images or copies and the required compliance information for each wine entered.
- Pay per entry and ship samples — fees are charged per wine, and you send the required number of bottles to the judging site by the published deadline.
- Watch the deadlines — entry closing dates, sample delivery windows and label submission dates are separate and unforgiving. Missing the delivery window means the wine isn't judged, regardless of payment.
Deciding whether it's worth entering
The San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition is positioned as the largest competition of American wines, which shapes the trade-off:
| Consideration | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Scale and recognition | A medal carries broad consumer recognition; retailers and distributors often use it in shelf talkers and marketing |
| Competition density | Large entry pools mean strong wines still miss medals; a single vintage's result says little about your overall quality |
| Cost and logistics | Entry fees, bottles and shipping add up quickly across multiple wines — enter selectively rather than everything you make |
| Feedback value | Judges' scores and comments, where provided, are more useful for improving a wine than the medal itself |
A practical next step
If you're planning for 2027, open the Information for Wineries page now and note the fee schedule, category list and shipping address, then build a calendar around those dates. Enter your two or three most commercially important wines first rather than your whole portfolio, and check the previous year's Best of Class results in your category — that tells you what the judges rewarded and whether your style fits. If you want independent context on how medals are used in the market, WineBusiness.com covers competition results and winery marketing practice.
Where can I find the list of medal winners from the current competition?
The current medal winners are listed under Medal Winners → Current Medal Winners on Winejudging.com. That section is the live home for the latest San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition results, and it sits alongside a separate Best of Class page for the top tier of that same year.
Winejudging.com
The site also keeps year-by-year archives, so if you are looking for a specific vintage of results rather than the newest ones, you can jump straight to the year you need:
- Current Medal Winners — the most recent competition's full medal list
- Best of Class — the highest-scoring selections from the current competition
- 2025, 2024, 2023 … back to 2014 Medal Winners — archived results by year
How to use this depending on who you are
| If you are… | Start here | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A shopper looking for award-winning bottles now | Current Medal Winners | Gives you the full field of recognized wines from the latest judging |
| Someone wanting only the standouts | Best of Class | Narrower, higher-signal list than the full medal roster |
| Comparing a wine's track record over time | The year-specific archive pages | Lets you check whether a winery or label has appeared repeatedly |
| A winery or trade visitor | Information for Wineries and the judges pages | Context on categories, judges and entry details rather than shopping |
One practical note: medal lists tell you a wine was recognized in a given year, not that the same bottle is still on shelves. Vintages move fast, so match the year on the medal page to the vintage printed on the label before you buy.
How are the Best of Class wines selected and what makes them stand out?
Best of Class is the top tier within the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, chosen from among the gold-medal winners in each category rather than from the full entry pool. According to the competition's own materials, veteran wine writer Mike Dunne tastes every Best-of-Class selection and provides expert commentary, narrowing the field to a final set of standouts.
How the selection works, step by step
- Wines are entered and sorted into judging categories.
- Professional judges award medals, with gold as the highest standard medal.
- Within each category, the strongest gold-medal wines are advanced to a Best of Class designation.
- Best-of-Class winners are then re-tasted and evaluated for the competition's broader honors, such as sweepstakes recognition.
What makes them stand out
- They are category leaders, not just medalists — the best expression of a specific varietal, style or price tier.
- They reflect consensus among multiple professional judges rather than a single critic's opinion.
- They are documented publicly, with results organized by year and by class, which makes them easy to verify and compare.
A practical way to use this If you are choosing a bottle for a dinner or a gift, start with the current Best of Class list and look for a category that matches what you already enjoy. Then read the tasting notes for that wine to see whether the described style — fruit-forward, structured, off-dry — fits your taste. A medal tells you the wine performed well in a blind comparison; the notes tell you whether it suits your palate.
For wineries Entering puts a wine in front of a large panel of professional judges and, if it advances, into a publicly posted result that retailers and consumers can find. The trade-off is that judging is comparative: a strong wine in a crowded category may not advance, while the same wine in a smaller category might. Category choice and vintage timing matter as much as quality.
For the full current and historical results, see Winejudging.com.
Who are the judges for the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition?
The judges are working wine professionals assembled by the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, and the official site lists them in two groups: current judges and former judges. You can browse both rosters through the competition's own pages at Winejudging.com, which also notes that its judges appear in video commentary about why wineries enter.
What the site makes clear is that judging is done by "professional wine judges," and that the competition publishes a separate annual Best-of-Class commentary written by veteran wine writer Mike Dunne. That is a useful distinction: the panel decides the medals, while Dunne's notes are a journalistic layer on top of the results.
H3 Practical way to use the judge list
- Before entering: check the current roster to see whether the panel's palate profile matches your wine style and region.
- After winning: read the Best-of-Class notes to understand how a medal was framed, which helps in shelf talkers and press releases.
- For consumers: use past medal winners by year to spot producers whose wines consistently place well.
If you want to know who judged a specific year, start with the current judges page, then check the former judges list for names that rotated off. The competition's own medal-winner archives by vintage let you connect a judge era to the results it produced.
What are the key dates and deadlines for the next competition?
The site does not publish a single consolidated calendar of entry deadlines, judging dates and results dates. What it does show is a competition cycle organized around named years, with 2026 and 2027 pages already present alongside an archive of past results.
H3 What the site makes visible
- A 2026 competition year, including 2026 judging content, a 2026 judges' dinner page and 2026 SFCWC badges.
- A 2027 competition year, with "Directors' Address 2027" and "2027 Wine Judging Categories" listed.
- Medal-winner results going back year by year, from current and Best of Class winners through the 2014 archive.
- Winery-facing information under "Information for Wineries," which is where entry timing would normally live.
- No explicit deadline dates in the supplied page content, so treat any specific cut-off as something to confirm directly with the organizers.
H3 How to use this
If you are a winery planning an entry, start on the "Information for Wineries" page and the 2027 categories page, then contact the competition directly to confirm the entry window, shipping deadlines and judging week. If you are a buyer, the practical sequence is: judging happens, Best of Class winners are announced, tasting notes follow, and medal lists are posted by year. Watching the current medal-winner page is the fastest way to see results as they land.
For broader context on how American wine competitions and their results are reported, the San Francisco Chronicle's wine coverage at San Francisco Chronicle is a reasonable companion read, and the Cloverdale Citrus Fair at Cloverdale Citrus Fair is the affiliated event the site describes.
H3 Decision criterion
Use the year labels, not a generic "next competition" assumption. The presence of both 2026 and 2027 material means the cycle overlaps: 2026 judging has happened, while 2027 categories and planning pages are already up. Check which year you actually want before relying on any date.
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