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Bourbon Pursuit

144 - Judging the San Francisco World Spirits Competition with Anthony Dias Blue

Bourbon Pursuit

Bourbon Pursuit

Hobbies, Food, Leisure, Arts

4.8926 Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2018

⏱️ 59 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What does a bourbon that receives double gold actually mean? Are the whiskies judged blind? We learn all this and more as the Executive Director of the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, Anthony Dias Blue, joins the show to give us an inside glimpse to the bourbons that can be entered and dispels some myths if it's a "pay to play" atmosphere. Show Notes: What sets your competition apart from the rest? How many different categories do you have at the event? Are all tastings done blind? Are they shelf bottles (from a standard distributor) or do distillers get to choose specific bottles they send in? Why not Jack Daniels and other major selling brands? How medals are awarded, and what those medals actually mean when we see them on a bottle? How many judges are there and how many need to rate a bourbon as Gold for it to receive a Gold Medal? Most of the time when I see a sticker on a bottle saying that this bourbon was rated as Gold or Double Gold, it doesn’t have a date on the sticker. If a bourbon is awarded a medal does it have that medal forever? Is it or can it be evaluated ever again? Does the producer have to do anything to maintain that medal? Is the "same" product is entered over multiple years and judged independently each year? How much weight should we consumers put on these awards when we see them on a brand we’ve never heard of or tried? Why have a competition at all? Is it "pay to play" and your entrance fee will automatically score you a medal? Do you see cases of "bait and switch"? Products/Sellers submit “honey” barrels to the competition to get a higher award, and then using that award to promote an inferior product. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Well, I, you know, professionally I'm Anthony Dias Blue, but most people call me Andy.

0:05.6

Andy? Okay. Well, for the purposes of the show, we're going to keep it as Anthony as well, so you can keep your reputation intact there.

0:28.8

Hey, everyone, we're back again with a great new episode this week, but as usual, we have some news to go through first.

0:35.8

There's a big congratulations in order to Blake Riber of Verbener, who the twins have finally arrived.

0:38.8

So we're going to see Blake here probably in a few months, but he deserves a much needed rest

0:40.5

while he goes and takes care of the new twins.

0:42.4

So congratulations, buddy.

0:43.9

We're looking forward to talking to you again soon.

0:46.5

Another thing is that we've been talking about it now

0:48.9

for about two episodes,

0:51.1

but we're gonna talk about it again

0:52.6

to keep it in front of your face,

0:54.1

but just to

0:54.7

know that the bands that are going to be at Bourbon Beyond are going to be announced on Monday, April

1:00.9

16th. So make sure you go to Burbid and Beyond.com and you go and you see what bands are going to be

1:06.3

there. You might even see our logo on there too. Who knows? We'll see what happens.

1:16.6

Patreon shipments have actually gone out this week. We finally got caught up. We've also done our giveaways, which you might have seen that we did for the months of February and March,

1:23.3

and it consists of tumblers, glassware, actually a bottle of Johnny Drum, and everyone's favorite blind samples.

1:30.5

So make sure that if you want to support this show, you want to be a part of these monthly giveaways, go to Patreon.com, help support this show.

1:37.9

We've got new stuff.

1:39.0

We've got bottle totes, patches, t-shirts.

1:41.3

And just to give you a quick background, this podcast actually almost ended at

...

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