The St. Catharines Wine Tasting of 2005 was a blind tasting of four named growth Bordeaux and twelve Ontario Cabernet and Cabernet blends held at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, on February 27, 2005.
The 51 judges in the wine competition were as follows * 8 members of The Wine Writers Circle of Canada * 20 members of The Wine Judges of Canada * 8 people from various wineries in Ontario, Canada * 9 professors and students from Brock University, Canada * 3 Canadian journalists * 3 Certified wine tasters (Canadian)
The results for the Canadian wines appear, on the surface, to be impressive, especially given the fact that most of the wineries from which they came had been making wine for fewer than twenty years. Their competitors all came from Bordeaux châteaux that had acquired prestige high enough by 1855 to have been included as Fourth and Fifth Growth wines in the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855. However, it has been argued that as Bordeaux wines often don’t achieve their full potential for many years (those tasted here ranged from 5-10 years old) the comparison is not a fair one and that a re-tasting should be conducted in 2015.