So here I am in the most metropolitan city in the world, where English has been relegated to an optional language and you can hear more tongues in a single bus ride than Christopher Columbus did on his entire trip. This is London and I am here with a purpose, for a change, that doesn't just involve shopping till my bank feels a minor dent in its holdings, and my accountant has a minor cardiac!

I am here, in fact, to judge at a wine competition, and a very prestigious wine competition at that. Decanter magazine, that very reputed wine read from the UK, has an annual event called the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) and I was there to judge with them this year for four days. I was accompanied by Stephane Soret from the Imperial hotel and together we were the Indian representation at this judging.

Steven Spurrier, who was in Delhi only two days earlier in his role as Chairman of the Board of Wine Advisers at The Wine Society of India, was now in London and in full form. He declared the competition open and we judges were directed to our respective rooms and tables.

There are many ways to organise a tasting but this is how the DWWA are conducted. We judges are allotted to particular tasting panels, normally based around the region or country of the wines' origin. The chair of the panel briefs us regarding the judging process and what to do in case of bad wines, medal winners, discrepancies and the like.

The wines are brought in, with all the bottles covered in bags, so the ideintity of the wines is not disclosed. But there is other information provided, like vintage, grape composition, region, and vintage which is sufficient to gauge a wine. The important thing to remember is to judge a wine individually for its own merits (or lack of them) and not against another wine in the flight. This is critical, as it implies that two wines even if made in different styles can be worthy of gold or silver medals if they impress equally. The idea is to reward good winemaking and a pleasing taste rather than question a winemaker's choices.

To be fair, some amount of prejudice due to personal preferences is unavoidable because no matter how stoic we are asked to be, or try to be, it is impossible to completely alienate ourselves from something we instinctively like. This is why a big group is good while judging so that no single individual's tastes dominate. Some people prefer to take all the wines together in a flight and taste them, while others prefer to pour one at a time. This is a matter of personal preference and shouldn't cloud our judgement.

Judges may be shuffled around so that they don't fall into a trend of marking wines a certain way if allowed to remain within a single group. Also, it is the best way to meet the established palates of the world.

Once the scoring is done, judges discuss the wines amongst themselves and see how unanimous is the decision to award or discard the wines in the flight. Sometimes people are in complete agreement but, at other times, the members can be all over the shop. This is when the ‘fun' starts and people try to discuss what can never be completely concluded. It does help to be humble and open as often something that you may have missed about a certain wine can be pointed out by another person thus making you question your initial observations. Competitions, when conducted properly such as this was, can be one rich exercise in learning.

Also, one last thing. When tasting wines, the most important part of the process is in the end - which is, spitting. You stop spitting and you are inviting serious trouble in the form of a hangover which compounds the next day and makes tasting even more difficult. Trying so many wines in a day is not always easy and when they happen to be young vintages of powerful reds, it is not the fun job that most people expect it to be.

So a lot to learn and look forward to, yet a part of me can't help but brood in scepticism. This part of me wonders whether judges really matter in the long run. Do awards make a difference? Sure, they help the medal winners sell better, but do they effectively weed out the bad wines from the market shelves and protect the consumer?

If you look at the world around us it would seem that no critic is really worth the paper on which he puts forth his comments. Why? Well, because I can't think of many wine reporters and judges who drive around in fancy cars, whereas even the bad wine producers, no matter how often pointed out by wine writers, still manage to smile smugly from behind the wheels of their Ferraris and Porsches. Maybe we need to introduce the vinous equivalent of the Raspberry awards to point out the bad wines. Sure the winemaker won't display the sticker in the supermarket but if marketed enough, it would do the consumer a whole lotta good to know which wines to watch out for.

But that is just me. For now, I am judging at a prestigious wine competition and learning so much about wine. For one thing, tasting too much of it increases your affinity for beer!

Just,

Magan.