Seb Costello
Sebastian (Seb) Costello first became involved with the Melbourne Royal Show when he was asked to be a judge of the Australian Distilled Spirits Awards in its inaugural year in 2015.
After starting work in the hospitality industry at 18, Seb opened his own bar, Bad Frankie, in 2014. Bad Frankie was the first bar to stock only Australian-made spirits, which meant that he already had a wealth of knowledge about the industry when he became a judge at the Awards. Seb explains that this knowledge is a key part of what makes a good judge:
'you’ve really got to know the products. You’ve got to have an in-depth feeling of the spirits … I was tasting spirits in Bad Frankie. I was talking to a lot of distillers so we could really, you know, get to know what was going on.'
The judging process is meticulously organised. The judges ‘blind taste’ each product, meaning they have no information about the distiller or any other product details. Several different categories are used to judge the spirits, including appearance, nose, palette, balance, and finish. Each panel of judges assesses 30 products a day, which Seb describes as an opportunity ‘to get a broad view of the industry over a couple of days’. Judges also use a variety of industry tricks during the judging process, such as resetting their palettes by ‘smell[ing] your arm round about your elbow’ or eating water crackers and green apple.
Seb was promoted to Head Judge in 2019, just before the COVID pandemic. The judging process had to quickly adapt to these new circumstances. Each of the 700 products being judged that year was packaged into individual 300ml bottles, which were sent to each judge’s home. All tasting was done remotely and panel discussions were conducted over Zoom. Seb recalls that it was a ‘really wonderful thing to do’ for the hospitality industry while it was struggling during the pandemic.
Seb is excited to see the Australian spirits industry grow over the coming years. The growth of the Awards themselves reflects the ways the industry has already developed rapidly: in 2015, there were 12 judges evaluating 115 products, but by 2022 there were 49 judges and 850 products. Seb sees this trend continuing, and credits the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria and events like the Australian Distilled Spirits Awards with helping to create spaces that encourage this growth and foster connection within the industry:
'[The RASV] sets this excellent standard of what they do, especially in the awards space, but also a sense of community and bringing people together … you need to come together. You need to figure out what everyone’s doing … I think that’s really important.'
Listen to a snippet of Seb Costello's oral history here