There are some people who couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. There are folk who look for the $6.99-a-bottle supermarket bargain. There are wine snobs who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

And then there is the wonderful woozy world of The Wine Country. That’s Hawke’s Bay, where they say that nothing finer comes out of a bottle.

But even in this paradise, there’s trouble brewing.

Corks popped as the Hawke’s Bay A & P Show’s Mercedes Benz Wine Awards champion wine trophy was won by the Gunn Estate, with its 2006 Skeetfield Chardonnay.

Along with the trophy and prestige went the use of a Mercedes Benz car for a year.

But dramatically, the whistle was blown by top New Zealand wine judge Michael Cooper. He called “foul” and slammed a screw cap on the contest.

He asked the Gunn Estate to hand back the award, claiming a conflict of interest because Chief Judge Tony Bish is winemaker for Hawke’s Bay’s Sacred Hill Winery which in turn owns the Gunn Estate and its winning label.

Bish (crying sour grapes) pleaded that “he had not been involved in any way during the competition judging that may have influenced the final result.”

True or false, it’s curious. This comes just after a year since Brent Marris, chief judge at the Air New Zealand Wine Awards (the country’s top wine competition) was forced to resign after his Wither Hills competition wines were found to be different to those in the shops.

The Gunn Estate handed back the trophy.

It should never have been in the competition, let alone won it. No good for Bish to withdraw by claiming his only interest was to maintain the integrity of the show. Sorry, Tony, but it was far too late for that feeble excuse to have a chance of floating.

These New Zealand wine contests – and certainly the international wine Oscars – are becoming known as wobbly, unreliable for buyers - and possibly corrupted.

But that’s not the end of the Hawke’s Bay saga.

Within hours of the shock announcement, awards organiser Hawke’s Bay A & P Society admitted that an error had led to Gunn Estate claiming champion wine. Competition director Nick Sage may have confused the numbers of the two top wines being judged, which led to the Gunn’s Chardonnay and not Vidal’s Reserve Syrah 2005 being declared the winner.

Smell a rat?

Starting to get your nose around this rather unpleasant concoction?

Was Nick subject to a pre-match dope-test?

The only winner from this fiasco, the flattest wine competition on Earth, is Vidal Estate. Its 2005 Reserve Syrah was crowned Champion Wine of Show and its winemaker Hugh Crichton was awarded Winemaker of the Year.

And then, incredibly, when the organisers thought they’d achieved a credible result, it emerged that a judging panel member had ties to Vidal.

Rod McDonald was the winemaker responsible for the company’s (wait for it) 2005 vintage.

It was a thoroughly corked contest that left a sour taste in the mouths of people who aren’t so much interested in being local heroes as international successes. There’s a feeling that local contests like these are more about back-slapping and bottom-licking. It’s done nothing to strengthen respect for wine-makers’ integrity. Your average wine quaffer will yawn and say: “What’s the point of getting interested in that closed club? I’d rather buy some highly-drinkable Aussie stuff from Pak ‘n Save than waste my time and money on studying this rubbish.”

The message in this bottle is: all those medals and trophies that grace New Zealand wine labels have been comprehensively devalued by a vintage farce; 2007 will be a year that any respectable member of the Hawke’s Bay wine industry will drink to forget.