A big challenge

I've spent a couple of days over the last week or so helping to judge at the International Wine Challenge, one of the three big wine-tasting competitions to run each year here in the UK. The picture, left, gives you some idea of the vast number of wines entered in such competitions. They're big business: big business for the people who run them (who charge a fee for each entry) and big business for the lucky winners (who get to put a sticker on the neck of the winning bottles in the hope that this will help them sell more wine).

Each day for the past fortnight, 100 or so experienced tasters – journalists, wine makers, wine merchants and sommeliers for the most part – have rocked up at one of the Barbican's exhibition hall. We get split into groups of between four and six judges per table, under the guidance of a panel leader, and then the tasting begins. The first week's job was merely to sort wines into three categories: Out (you really don't want to put that in your mouth, do you?), Commended (it's drinkable, but far from exciting) and Medal-worthy. This is done by tasting your way through flight after flight of wine – a flight is made up of anywhere from a couple to a dozen bottles of wines of a similar style (for instance, German Riesling or Australian Shiraz) – and then deliberating over the various merits of the wines.

The second week, any potentially medal-winning wine is re-tasted in order to determine whether it's worthy of a Bronze (good, but not remarkable), Silver (batting well above average) or Gold (outstanding). Yesterday was a week two-day, and my judging colleagues and I tasted our way through 75 wines, awarding one Gold, about three or four Silvers, numerous Bronzes and kicking a number of wines back into Commended positions.

After a day spent tasting like this, my teeth were stained black with tannin (which makes you look like your dentist learned his skills back in the 17th century) and I have to remember not to smile politely at anyone on the bus on the way home.