EAST LANSING — As winemakers across the state toast their gold, silver and bronze winners in the Michigan Wine Competition, the annual contest is quietly observing a milestone this year.

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the competition, which now brings wine experts from across the country to East Lansing every year to select Michigan’s best red, white and sparkling wines. In 1977, there were about only a dozen wineries in Michigan; today, there about 130, and that number is expected to continue to grow.

But what humble beginnings.

The contest was originally called the Michigan State Fair Wine Competition. And as that title suggests, the first few events were held at the state fairgrounds at 8 Mile and Woodward in Detroit. And because home wine-making was popular at the time, amateurs were allowed to participate (that tradition ended as the state’s commercial wine industry grew).

The first judging took place in the Coliseum, a multi-purpose arena, and panel members endured the odor of manure from the nearby horse and cow pens as they smelled, sipped and spit wine.

“The smell was so prominent in the air, but you could sort through it,” recalled Joe Borrello, a Grand Rapids-based wine journalist, consultant and educator who was a judge in the inaugural event and has missed just one contest since then. “Those were the days when the industry was just getting going. There was some god-awful stuff in those early days, but everything starts out that way. You learn and grow.”

The following year the competition relocated to the State Fair Auditorium, an only slightly better venue. Before landing at its current home at the Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center in East Lansing, judging was held at other locales, including the now-defunct Machus Red Fox in Bloomfield Township, a restaurant more famous for the last sighting of Teamster Jimmy Hoffa in 1975 than its wine menu.

Gone are the days when bottles would be covered in brown paper bags and marked with numbers. Judges would pour the wine themselves and afterward could pull the bottle off the bag to find out whose wine they were drinking. Now, the competition follows the industry standard — flights of wine served in glasses by categories and marked by numbers. It’s a complete blind tasting.

Some 25 judges from Michigan and across the country spent several hours in the Lincoln Room at the conference center Tuesday evaluating some 380 wines from 58 wineries. Panels were divided among white-clothed tables, with superintendent and chief judge Christopher Cook presiding over the event. It was a congenial, quiet affair, with little chatter. Once tastings have been completed, a table captain directs discussion about each wine and judges weigh in with their votes.

“This is an industry that has moved so far, so fast,” said Cook, chief restaurant critic and wine writer for HOUR Detroit magazine, who also judges other competitions across the country. “Michigan has a really funny problem with wine. Michigan people don’t think we can do wine here; cars, yes. Wines, no … but outside of Michigan, they’re bowled over by Michigan wines.”

The judges included well-known figures in the wine world, including winemaker-author Dr. Richard Peterson; and Jim Trezise, who is president of Wine America, a Washington, D.C.-based wine lobbying group and president of the International Riesling Foundation. Local experts included Madeline Triffon, the first American woman sommelier, who is with Plum Markets; and Michael Welsh, who heads the beer and wine department at Joe’s Produce in Livonia.