Wine Enthusiast誌がついにブログを始めました。7月10日付の三つ目の記事は，物議を醸しているTwo Buck ChuckがCalifornia State Fairでダブル・ゴールドを受賞した件を取り上げています。本当においしいのかどうか，他のワインと合わせてブラインド・テイスティングをしたのです。

その結果，Wine EnthusiastのJim Gordonの採点ではTwo Buck Chuck（Charles Shaw California 2005）は78点で4ワイン中4位。ただ，このテイスティングには20代から3代の素人が大部分で彼らには3位と4位のワインが人気だったそうです。

結果として以下のような考察をしています。
"1. The system of judging failed. Maybe the judges had tried too many wines that day, or disagreed heavily over more controversial wines that were either very oaky, unoaked, too heavy with malolactic or something, so the only wine they could agree that they all liked was the most innocuous one. I think this happens frequently in big competitions with multiple judges.

2. The judges themselves were not up to the task. Maybe not enough of them had experience with great Chardonnay, or maybe it happened to be a group prejudiced against high-alcohol or even against Chardonnay in general.

3. The samples sent to the competition were not the same wine that I tried in the blind tasting. This is probably true in a very straightforward sense, because with millions of cases of Two-Buck Chuck being sold, it can’t all have been blended from exactly the same base wines in the same proportions in the same tank."

Blind-tasting Two-Buck Chuck Wine Enthusiast Magazine’s Unreserved

ステートフェアの採点システム自体の問題か，採点者が素人だったのか，テイスティングしたワインが別物だったのか。

今回の「快挙」には多くの人が異議を唱えていますが，ステートフェアのメダルの意味そのものも今後問われることになるのかもしれません。