Lisa Perrotti-Brown makes some interesting accusations, and maybe solves the Wine Advocate sake mystery

Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW

Longtime readers of The Gray Report may remember that in 2016, I discovered an unusual situation whereby every sake rated 90 points or more by the Wine Advocate was available at one retailer that sold only those sakes. It was as if the retailer, which I later learned seemed to have a connection to Robertparker.co.jp, had prior knowledge of which sakes the Advocate would recommend, so it could corner the market and raise prices.

At the time, Wine Advocate Editor-in-Chief Lisa Perrotti-Brown said she would investigate, but never released any results of the investigation.

Earlier this week, she may have revealed what happened.

Perrotti-Brown has only worked for one wine ratings organization: The Wine Advocate, where she was Editor-in-Chief from 2012 until last year, when she quit to go solo.

In launching her new project, The Wine Independent, Perrotti-Brown issued a press release and did interviews with writers from The Drinks Business and Wine-Searcher (not me.) In all three of these opportunities to speak out, Perrotti-Brown leveled some interesting accusations about ratings organizations. The wine world isn't as obsessed with the Wine Advocate as we were before Robert Parker retired, but nonetheless I'm surprised this hasn't been bigger news.

This is a story she seemingly wants to tell. But she might be afraid of being sued by her former employer, which is now owned by The Michelin Guide, which has been accused of ethical breaches for its food guide. It's worth noting that Robert Parker recruited Perrotti-Brown to the Advocate -- she started writing a column for the publication in 2008, before he sold it -- and Parker's personal ethics were always impeccable.

Let's start with her press release:

Perrotti-Brown and (partner Johan) Berglund seek a return to the high ethical standards initially championed by Robert M. Parker, Jr. back when he started The Wine Advocate in 1978 ...

"Still, numerous conflicts of interest have come to light in recent years, such as selling event tables to wineries and score previews to retailers through ultra-premium subscriptions. Some supposedly reputable publications – ones that claim to be independent - are guilty of such practices. As a result, faith in wine reviews has been eroded to the point where buyers no longer know who they can trust.”

Hmm, score previews through ultra-premium subscriptions. Well, that would explain the sake mystery, right?

But as I said at the time, score previews for sake are a small market. Imagine how much retailers might be willing to pay to know Bordeaux scores, if there's a possibility to buy futures before the ratings are released?

Here's what The Drinks Business article says:

Perrotti-Brown told db that such “shenanigans” were the source of “large amounts of money” for wine criticism titles

But there's a bigger ethical problem she hints at, much bigger than selling scores to retailers or semi-blackmailing wineries to buy event tables.

What if a 95-point score can be bought?

Here's what she told Don Kavanagh at Wine-Searcher (hi Don!):

There are other models now where you get wineries to pay huge amounts of money – I mean, thousands of dollars – for an event table, or to do this or that. And that's happening behind the scenes, and everybody's like "Oh, yeah, no, they don't do pay-to-play, you know, there's none of that going on". It's just hidden and nobody realizes.

We all know the shenanigans that go on, but I'd say, 90-95 percent of consumers have no idea that any of this is going on – all they see is a score, and they just believe that it's got some meaning behind it. But the problem is, you know, the penny is starting to drop [with consumers], because they're starting to say "What's the big deal about this 95-point experience that I'm supposed to be getting? This is a mediocre wine at best." What's going to happen is wine criticism is going to become meaningless. So because there is too much emphasis on scores, scores are being inflated, you don't know what's behind those scores in terms of agendas, and ultimately the consumers are being had. They're, they're the ones that are getting a bad experience when they follow scores. And that's just wrong.

It's possible to read the criticism of event tables as a criticism of Wine Spectator, which (pre-pandemic) staged a huge event every year called the Wine Experience. Winery people have bitched to me for a long time that they feel pressured to participate in Wine Spectator's shindig.

It's not just Spectator; independent critic James Suckling, a Spectator alumnus, hosts "Great Wines" grand tastings. Vinous, run by Advocate alumnus Antonio Galloni, hosts wine events as well. Wine events are a good way for wine ratings organizations to make money.

Is there a connection between participation in events and the ratings a winery receives? People including me have tried to prove one, but I haven't seen it proven yet. You could read Perrotti-Brown's criticism as being leveled at other organizations.

But let me say this again: Perrotti-Brown hasn't worked at these other organizations. She has only worked at The Wine Advocate, which also hosts events called Matter of Taste. So while she might be leveling criticism at a ratings-industry trend, the fact is she only has inside knowledge about one organization.

As she said, you don't know what's behind those scores in terms of agendas. But she does. And she sounds like she really, really wants to tell us.

Whenever you're ready, Ms. Perrotti-Brown, I am all ears.

Follow me on Twitter: @wblakegray and like The Gray Report on Facebook.

Endorsements (with bonus rant): San Francisco school board recall election February 2022

Total Recall!

There are three races on this ballot, but one is much more important and attention-getting than the others, and will get the bulk of this post.

Let's do the easier ones first:

State Assembly District 17 special primary: Bilal Mahmood

This is ironic. The position is open because David Chiu, who beat Chris Campos for an assembly seat in 2014, decided to take the San Francisco City Attorney job last fall, as he would have been term-limited out of the assembly this year. Thus we have four elections for this seat this year: this February primary and an April general election between the top two in this primary (all four are Democrats) to fill a seat that will be on the ballot AGAIN for the regular June primary and November general election. Incumbency is really powerful in San Francisco, and now Campos might get incumbency 8 years later because Chiu quit early.

Campos, a former member of the Board of Supervisors, is running against current Board member Matt Haney; early polling shows these two in the lead. This sucks because they are the two worst candidates. Campos is considered more liberal than Haney, but the progressive San Francisco Bay Guardian -- which hates Chiu -- refused to endorse Campos in 2014. Haney is a "progressive" NIMBY; he recently voted to delay approval of a 250-bed homeless shelter even though the second phrase of his campaign website says he supports "housing more homeless." When he was president of the school board in 2016 (something he doesn't even mention in his four-page election flier), Haney is the joker who first proposed renaming schools named after racists like George Washington. It's probably not great for him to be on this particular ballot (you'll read a lot more about the school board below) but all he has to do is finish second and he'll get a shot in April.

I am torn between Mahmood and Thea Selby. Read about Mahmood here. Though he worked in the Obama administration as a policy analyst, Mahmood has no experience running for office. Selby has been on the community college board since 2014, and to her credit it has improved from being the most-irresponsible government agency in SF during her tenure. I slightly prefer Mahmood's stands on issues including housing and a potential Green New Deal. Either is better than the other two.

UPDATE: The Chronicle endorsed Mahmood! I'm stunned and pleased. And also validated: I made my choices by reading their positions and watching a debate, but the Chronicle has the resources to interview the candidates and the expertise to parse all their past decisions. I hope this is the push Mahmood needs to make it to the runoff.

Assessor-Recorder: Whatever

Joaquín Torres was appointed to this job in February 2021 and is running unopposed for election to a full term. I have no idea if he's any good at the job, but it doesn't matter because he only needs one vote to win. Here's his website.

Now the main event:

San Francisco School Board Recall Election (Propositions A, B and C): Yes, Yes, Hell Yes! TOTAL RECALL!

Here is the TLDR version of this election endorsement:

Vote to recall all 3 of the San Francisco school board members on the ballot for these reasons:

* The school board that includes these three was more interested in renaming schools that had been named after racists like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington than in coming up with a school reopening plan.
* The board still has never come up with a plan for students to make up for all the lost learning
* The board has not paid any attention to its budget, building up a huge deficit. In December it was finally forced to approve an immediate $90 million in cuts in an attempt to avert a state takeover.

* The state might have to take over our schools! What more clear evidence could you ask for that this board is incompetent?

* These three were never the choice of a majority of the electorate in the first place.
* Alison Collins, after her racist tweets from 2016 were exposed, tried to take $87 million out of the school budget and put it in her own pocket.
* Collins' ally, board chairperson Gabriela Lopez, has led the board through its era of complete incompetence. She has shown us she cannot do the job
* Faauuga Moliga is not as bad as Collins or Lopez, but he hasn't shown that he's part of the solution. Removing him will give a more competent administrator a chance to do a better job.

xxxxxxxxx

Recall these three: Collins, Lopez and Moliga

I have a lot to say about this recall election, so if you lose interest just go back to the TLDR version. I want to look at how the board got this bad, and what might be done to get a more professional school board in the future.

I also want to wring my hands about recall elections in general. I don't think they're good for American democracy unless required by malfeasance or egregious incompetence. Generally I won't vote "Yes" on a recall even if I dislike the office holder. And whether the recall succeeds or not, these three seats are also up for election in November.

But this recall is very necessary, just to get Alison Collins out of a job that nearly every city political leader asked her to resign from two years ago because of her anti-Asian racism. 

Having already staked out a position that even Abraham Lincoln was not sufficiently anti-racist,
the school board had little choice but to strip Collins of her title as Vice President.

Collins turned around and filed a lawsuit for $87 million, attempting to redirect about 7 percent of the annual school budget into her own bank account. She failed, but undermined the schools anyway. Her lawsuit was ridiculous, but it cost the school district $110,000 to fight it.

Collins could file something like this again, at any time. She needs to go. A school board member who thinks it's OK to sue the school district for $87 million because her feelings were hurt cannot stay in a position where she has any influence on how money for schools is spent.

Collins is the headliner here, but there are many other reasons this recall is happening, and her lawsuit isn't the main one. I'm not going to touch on most of them; this official site for recall proponents does an excellent job, and I recommend that you read it. While you're there, check out the who's who of local politicians from both left and center (we have no right) who support this recall.

Instead, I want to talk about how these three people got elected to a job they have proven they are unqualified for.

The 2018 election had 19 candidates for 3 school board spots. Collins got the most votes of any candidate -- 15% of the votes cast. Lopez got 13.7% and Moliga got 13.2%. This meant relatively easy wins for them: the next closest candidate, Phil Kim, got 9.3%.

If those numbers were quadruple, I would have serious qualms about voting for this recall. But here's a statistical fun fact for you: at least 2/3 of people who voted in the 2018 school board election DID NOT CHOOSE ANY OF THESE THREE CANDIDATES.

In other words, they were not the choice of a majority of voters. Not even close. 817,920 votes were cast in the school board election. Between the three of them, they amassed 342,153 votes -- not even close to half, and many people voted for more than one of them for reasons I will explain below. They were chosen by a minority of voters: less than one in seven voters in the cases of Lopez and Moliga.

That's how democracy works in a crowded race. But my point is that there was no "will of the people" to install these three on the board. (I'm going to revisit the "will of the people" argument when District Attorney Chesa Boudin's recall election comes up later in 2022.)

So, how did they get elected?

Let's credit the three of them for good campaigning. Here's a nice story about how Lopez became the youngest elected official in San Francisco.

We wanted our own AOC; we love AOC in San Francisco. But AOC is uniquely brilliant, and unfortunately, the job of school board chairman for a huge, combative school district turned out to be too much for this 27-year-old schoolteacher, though you gotta admire her moxie.

Collins, an educator for 20 years, won in part because she had the support of the teachers' union. Moliga had widespread support from the city's liberal organizations. That's how you get above 10% of the vote when that's all that's necessary.

What did the media have to say about them? Glad you asked: that was a problem.

There are only two major publications in San Francisco that do detailed election endorsements, and one of them, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, went out of print several years ago and continues to exist online only for endorsements. We should be very grateful to SFBG editor Tim Redmond (who now runs the site 48 Hills) for this pro-bono work. I always appreciate that the Guardian interviews all the candidates and parses the issues. I find the Guardian's endorsements very helpful in making up my own mind.

However. The Guardian is very left-wing. In elections where the city is paying attention, the Guardian's "clean slate" endorsement is never enough to win. Former Mayor Willie Brown once said (I don't remember the exact quote), "In San Francisco, the left can muster 40% for every election. That's always enough to lose." Brown is right: though considered very left-wing for California, he was the centrist candidate in San Francisco, as was Gavin Newsom, as was Kamala Harris, as was London Breed. For citywide offices, the centrists almost always win. (Chesa Boudin is an important exception.)

But what about when the city is not paying attention? That's the problem with school-board races: only very involved people pay attention, which means a committed minority -- in this case as little as 10% of voters -- can win even if their views don't represent the city as a whole.

That's when we need the city's only remaining newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, to step up and give us guidance. The Chronicle has always been fairly pragmatic with its endorsements. It also has easily the most resources for this: it has an editorial board to interview the candidates and reporters to research them. For elections like the school board, where I know very little about the candidates, I like guidance from the Chronicle.

But the Chronicle doesn't provide much coverage of school board races, perhaps because it still sees its coverage area as regional and not local, and it doesn't want to parse the school board races in Napa and Livermore, etc. More irritating is that periodically it puts its endorsements behind its paywall. This makes no sense, because Chronicle endorsements are a public service -- the newspaper could make this community better by telling us how to vote in these obscure races.

The Chronicle's 2018 school-board endorsements are not behind a paywall, but they weren't easy to find on the site at the time either. And the endorsement editorial is only six paragraphs long, with only four paragraphs about the candidates. It's not a compelling argument, unfortunately, though personally I voted for the Chronicle's choices anyway. We wouldn't be having this recall if more people had done so; none of them won.

Chronicle people will tell you that the newspaper and the website SFGate are separate entities, though owned by the same company. Fine. Hearst Corporation, you have a civic responsibility to bring these two entities together when it comes to election endorsements, which could be posted on SFGate, but are not.

When the Chronicle hides its endorsements and short-plays them, that gives the Guardian, as well as special interest groups (which in San Francisco are usually very left-wing) much more power. I look at these winning candidates' vote totals -- 15%, 13.7% and 13.2% -- and see an election that a committed group of ideologues can win. And in fact, Collins, Lopez and Moliga all got the Guardian's endorsement.

This was the case in the past with the community college board; left-wing ideologues ran the community college district into the ground, blowing its budget and nearly losing its accreditation. That situation started to get better when the Chronicle started paying attention.

We need you, Chronicle! Please don't abandon covering local politics, and please stop minimizing the impact of your endorsements.

UPDATE: The Chronicle endorses this recall. (But I couldn't find this on the Chronicle website; I follow a Chronicle staffer who tweeted it.)

So Collins, Lopez and Moliga were basically elected by the far left, and they immediately went to work to please their small constituency, ordering a historic mural of George Washington destroyed in a decision that was overturned by a judge:

Then they went after Lowell High School, which has been the one gem of the San Francisco public school system: a merit-based school that allows the children of working-class families to have the same high-quality education that private schools offer. The board voted to basically destroy it by opening up admissions on a lottery basis. If you don't have the best students, you're not going to have the best school. Their theory is that it's unfair that some kids get a better education than others, so everyone should have the same subpar education. You can't call it socialist thinking because even the Soviet Union found ways to get its brighter students into technical programs. It's more akin to sibling jealousy: if I can't have something nice, you can't have it either.

The Lowell issue was the one that sparked parents to begin gathering signature for a recall. I agree with the parents on this, but I wouldn't vote to recall the board members based on Lowell alone. The board members can argue that they represented the wishes of the people who voted for them (though that brings me back to pointing out that at least 2/3 of people who voted in the election did not choose any of them.)

If anyone is reading this looking for anything that might reflect national politics, first of all, it's schools not reopening during the pandemic, but hopefully by November that won't be an issue anymore. Otherwise, it's Lowell. I've been thinking about this a lot in the wake of the Democratic Party's hand-wringing over losing the Virginia governor's election. That election turned on education issues, but exit polls showed that despite GOP posturing, fear of Critical Race Theory didn't move as many voters as expected.

That would be the case here. If San Francisco had a referendum on teaching Critical Race Theory to kindergartners, it would pass by a large majority; we're not afraid of it. But take away a merit-based admissions policy and voters revolt. Keep that in mind, national Democrats.

The school renaming issue was the final straw for many voters; it was what induced me to sign the petition. During the pandemic, the board spent many hours discussing renaming 44 schools instead of coming up with a plan for reopening the schools. That's a clear sign that the current school board doesn't care about education; only about left-wing politics. And even after they spent a year on the project, the board couldn't get its facts straight! They put Paul Revere on the wrong side of the Revolutionary War, and blamed Abraham Lincoln for allowing 38 Santee Sioux to be hanged when in fact he pardoned and thus saved 262 Santee Sioux in the incident. (Not to mention that when regarding Lincoln's legacy, is this the only incident that matters?)

How can you tell people how to teach history when you can't understand it yourself?

I plan to vote against all of the current school board members when they come up for re-election, with the exception of Kevine Boggess, who voted against the school renaming.

But let's get back to the recall. Because of her lawsuit, Collins has to go, as soon as possible; she's a danger to the school system. Lopez has been president of the board during this period of incompetence. She is in over her head. Perhaps the board would have been better served by making someone else president, but they chose Lopez and she has failed at the job.

How badly? The school board spent an entire year not addressing its budget deficit; instead, the board assigned the deputy superintendent who oversees the budgeting process to the school renaming project. By the time the board realized it needed to make cuts, the cuts had to be more sudden and extreme than they might have been if Lopez had put the item on the agenda earlier. Teachers protested outside the board meeting against the budget cuts; it makes me wonder how many of them intentionally chose candidates who would ignore fiscal issues (this happened with the community college board). Lopez voted against the cuts, saying she was "cornered into accepting a proposal." You were in charge! You should have done something earlier!

Public school enrollment is down 4.7% since fall 2020, and private school enrollment is up 1.1%. Some parents have left the city, and unfortunately more parents have decided they must pay for education because the public schools couldn't put together a plan to open for so long, and still don't have a plan to make up for missed education. That's a failure.

I will also vote to recall Moliga, but the argument against him is the weakest. The only knock against Moliga is that he hasn't been part of the solution.

But I will vote against him because this is a rare chance to get three pragmatists on the board at once. Mayor London Breed, a centrist, will appoint replacements for whichever candidates are recalled. It is so hard, for structural reasons, for a pragmatist to get elected for this school board; look at the failure of all of the Chronicle's endorsees in 2018. The most influential media for school board races -- the Guardian -- endorses ideologues. If 48 Hills supplants the Guardian (please don't give up, Tim, we need you for the ballot questions), it will be the same.

As long as a candidate can win a board seat with just 13% of the vote, this board will be owned by the city's activist progressives. Our schools will have great equity initiatives, but not much focus on education.

If Mayor Breed nominates three replacements, they can run in the November election as incumbents, and maybe that will give them the edge to stay on the board. They would be in the minority, but it would be amazing to have, on an ideological board, a pragmatic faction. So, sorry Moliga, but if we recall you, we can do better.

And if we recall all three, maybe we will bring some seriousness to a board that has been very silly.

Also, a reminder: if you don't like the current school board, it was assembly candidate Matt Haney (see above) who started them down this path, a fact he would rather not have mentioned.

Follow me on Twitter: @wblakegray and like The Gray Report on Facebook.

Update: Sonoma County spokesperson confirms that San Francisco Chronicle wine competition appears to be in violation of health order

The San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, ongoing in Cloverdale in northern Sonoma County, is indeed in violation of Sonoma County's health order this week banning large gatherings.

But nothing is going to happen about it unless a Sonoma County resident complains. And even then ... nothing is going to happen.

This is an update of my blog post yesterday. Sonoma County Communications Manager Paul Gullixson finally called me Thursday afternoon. To say that Gullixson immediately confirmed that the competition, run by Winejudging.com, is breaking the law would be an overstatement. Gullixson said several times, "We don't know the specifics of how this is being held." He only knew what I told him and read him out loud from Winejudging.com's website.

But Gullixson did know the details of the health order, which he stated to me several times. The key is this:

"Large gatherings, as defined below, are prohibited.  To the extent a large gathering has been planned to occur during the period of this Order, it shall be postponed or canceled."

Gullixson said that neither Winejudging nor the Chronicle (which is just a naming sponsor) contacted the county about an exemption. 

"They have not reached out to us in an attempt to see if they need an accommodation or guidance, or how to hold this," Gullixson said. "It sounds like it would fall under special events, which would be like weddings. Then it would be (limited to) no more than 50 people." 

Gullixson said he wasn't sure if the competition would try to claim the exemption for restaurants, but if it is an event and not a restaurant, then there is no exemption.

I read a long section of Winejudging's statement to Gullixson: "This endeavor is a structured and highly controlled private assessment of agricultural products. The public is not allowed at the facility (i.e; not a restaurant) and the judges, staff and volunteers, are held to strict COVID mitigation protocols including symptom checks upon arrival before entering the building, temperature checks, the use of PPE, and frequent hand sanitizing."

But Gullixson said the order is about the number of attendees, not mitigation protocols. There is no mention on the WineJudging site of the number of people at the event, but as I reported yesterday, there are photos of 51 judges, and wine competitions have more volunteers than judges, often two or three times more. 51 judges PLUS 51 times X volunteers > 50.

"If they did move this outside or put it in a canopy, that would be a different situation," Gullixson said.

The judges and volunteers at the event shouldn't worry because at this point, there's not enough time for the county to act.

"We do have an ordinance in this case. The health order calls for the potential for penalties," Gullixson said. "Our compliance team would investigate. We would ask them to address whatever non-compliance is occurring. If there's repeated non-compliance, there would be a fine invoked. We are not eager to go out and police this at every occasion. That is not what we want to do. We have responded on a complaint basis."

Gullixson said he's happy that most Sonoma County residents and businesses have complied with previous health orders.

"Most often when there is a violation of a health order, when we have visited the venue and addressed it with the owner, in most cases they have adjusted to fall in line with the health order and that has been the end of it," he said.

Friday Jan. 14 is the scheduled end of the competition, so whether or not it's a superspreader event, the issue ends then.

A number of people have asked why I'm covering this. Good question! In fact, I should be writing a feature story -- nice people making nice wine -- that is due early next week that I will get paid for. Blogging is pro bono work and it's taking me away from my real job.

Here's why I'm doing it. 1. I know it's happening. 2. I know it's wrong. 3. Nobody else is covering it.

One of the reasons I got into journalism was to speak truth to power. It bothers me to see organizations break the law with impunity. I think the role of the media is to say something about it.

I have prodded the San Francisco Chronicle a number of times over the last day to ask why they aren't covering their sponsored event flouting a law. Believe me, I'd rather read about it in The Chronicle than have to write it up myself. They would do a better job!

I don't understand why The Chronicle runs stories like this about health order violations, but not about this one. A health-order violation helped lead to a gubernatorial recall election. Our priorities must be different: I'm not bothered by individuals, even politicians, going maskless at a private party; the potential for spreading Covid-19 is limited to the attendees, and the number at Newsom's party was small. If you want to risk getting Covid-19 at a small gathering, that's your choice.

But a large organization -- one sponsored by The Chronicle itself! -- openly flouting the law with a large event during a Covid-19 surge that led to a specific health order gets my journalistic-responsibility sense tingling.

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog post, wine competitions are less safe than other large gatherings. People don't wear masks and they spit all day. It's a recipe for a superspreader event.

Yet I can raise no objection to the competition happening Monday and Tuesday, before the health order was in place. I wouldn't want to be there myself while the pandemic is ongoing, but my objection is not that the competition is happening.

My objection is that it is openly breaking the law.

That's what reporters are supposed to report on. Where are you, San Francisco Chronicle?

Follow me on Twitter: @wblakegray and like The Gray Report on Facebook.

Chronicle Wine Competition continues in apparent defiance of Sonoma County health order

The Chronicle Wine Competition posted these photos on Jan. 12

On Monday, Jan. 10, Sonoma County issued a health order prohibiting gatherings of more than 50 people indoors, effective Wednesday, Jan. 12 at 12:01 a.m.

The San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition began Monday Jan. 10 in Cloverdale in northern Sonoma County, and as of Jan. 12 in the afternoon, it is still going on, despite apparently being in violation of the order.

In fact, on Wednesday the competition website was updated to announce "Wine Judging is Underway!" Clicking on the link took readers to another page, "Photos of the SFCWC Wine Judging," that shows judges in white coats sniffing at wine glasses. (I saved a PDF of this in case the competition directors read this post and take the photos down.)

Were there more than 50 people at the competition, including judges and volunteers? The photo page shows 51 judges, so, yes. 

For people who have not been to a wine competition, the judges are just the tip of the iceberg. You need volunteers to open the bottles, pour wines into glasses, bring the glasses to the judges, and collect and dump spit buckets. Glasses must be washed. You also need people to keep track of which wines won which medals. There is usually a very large ratio of volunteers to judges.

Something else about wine competitions: they involve people without masks, spitting constantly, hundreds of times in a day.

I don't know how many volunteers and judges the Chronicle Wine Competition had working indoors together this week. Winejudging.com, which runs the competition, did not respond to my email query.

In fact, nobody wants to talk about this. I know several judges at the competition, but none would speak on the record (though I could confirm that the competition is ongoing and more than 50 people are there.)

Sonoma County's health officer wouldn't return my calls; I don't see an exception for wine competitions in the order, though. The competition is only scheduled to run through Friday, Jan. 14. Ignore it for two more days and the problem goes away. I doubt that the sheriff is going to show up on Friday morning.

The San Francisco Chronicle doesn't run the competition; it is only the naming sponsor. Nonetheless, I emailed Chronicle publisher Bill Nagel; he hasn't responded (yet) either.

You might wonder why I'm breaking this story and The San Francisco Chronicle is not. Well, I wonder that too.

I also wonder how a building full of journalists, wine educators, sommeliers, wine buyers, and local volunteers can all hold the mutual belief that the law does not apply to wine competitions. Maybe gold medals make everything legal?

Follow me on Twitter: @wblakegray and like The Gray Report on Facebook.