Ultimate Spirits Challenge

I’ve had the pleasure, and the challenge, to be involved with a number of major spirits competitions in my career. Often, I look forward to them with a combination of excitement and dread. I’m always excited at the opportunity to taste side by side with some of the industry’s luminaries and help accolade some of the world’s best spirits. However, I often dread the Herculean task of nearly drowning in spirits with flight after flight of spirits.

For many years the main competition I judged was the San Francisco International Spirits Competition. In 2012, I ended my tenure with them (at the same time I stopped writing for The Tasting Panel Magazine), over deep concerns over the ethics of the publisher of the magazine (who also runs the competition). Spirits competitions are only as good as the people who run them, so if a medal is ever going to mean anything, it has to come from someone who people can trust.

This year I had the pleasure to judge the Ultimate Spirits Challenge. Located in Hawthorne, New York (about an hour train ride from New York City), Ultimate Spirits Challenge is housed in a tasting center built from the ground up for the specific purpose of housing beverage competitions. Conceived by the legendary F. Paul Pacult, Ultimate Spirits Challenge takes decades of experience and learnings in the competition space and builds on them to create one of the smartest, well constructed, and perfectly executed spirits competitions.

A Flight at Ultimate Spirits Challenge

Unlike most spirits competitions which are adjunct to a conference or festival, Ultimate Spirits Challenge is part of a series of competitions under the Ultimate Beverage Challenge umbrella. At this point the competitions cover spirits, cocktails, and wine, but there are discussions about future expansions to other beverage categories.

One of the things that makes the Ultimate Spirits Challenge unique is that it does not just take place over a weekend. Spirit groupings are split into two day rounds, with several rounds scheduled throughout the year. This means that judges get to spend more concentrated time on smaller flights of spirits, and the competition is less an exercise in palate endurance and more a qualitative analysis of the spirits being judged.

Small Flights Equal Better Results

Also, unlike most spirits competitions, Ultimate Spirits Challenge doesn’t give out medals; instead, each spirit gets a unique score (on the classic 100 point scale) as well as detailed tasting notes from the judges. Many spirits competitions team judges into groups of four (or more), but at the Ultimate Spirits Competition, each team consists of two people. I found this to be exceptionally more effective and as a whole we spent much less time waxing poetic about what we were tasting, and much more time on the sensory analysis and spirits evaluation.

The mix of judges also sets Ultimate Spirits Challenge apart. For the round I judged (which included American Whiskies, Rum, Pisco, Sloe Gin, and Coffee Liqueurs), I was paired with the legendary Dale DeGroff. Other judges in this round included such industry luminaries as Willie Shine, Tad Carducci, Dan Nicolaescu, Doug Miller, James Conley, Francis Schott, and of course, F. Paul Pacult. By drawing from a diverse cross section from the spirits industry, the Ultimate Spirits Challenge represents a diverse number of perspectives and disciplines.

As I compared notes with Dale DeGroff, I found that many of my comments were focused on the structure and character of a spirit while Dale’s were focused on flavor and mix-ability. This ended up being an ideal combination where our two styles lined up to give a complete picture of each spirit.

Ultimate Beverage Challenge

Another element that makes the Ultimate Spirits Challenge unique is the companion cocktail element to the competition. All of the major spirits that we evaluated neat were also evaluated in a benchmark cocktail (i.e. Daiquiri or Manhattan). It was clear that some of the spirits performed much differently in the cocktails.

Ultimately, the thing that makes Ultimate Spirits Challenge so relevant is that it’s run by people who deeply understand spirits. By lessening the load in each round for judges and giving them more time to focus on fewer spirits, the results are much better. Also by giving scores with notes rather than medals, the real cream rises to the crop, unlike many competitions which are simply medal factories, with a majority getting “gold” or “double gold”.

Results for the 2015 Ultimate Spirits Challenge have begun to roll out from the first few rounds, with complete results posted on the Ultimate Beverage site.

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