Sunday
For super-winos like Jancis Robinson and James Halliday it was probably just another appointment: last week Sydney, next month Budapest, now Cape Town. More precisely: Paarl, at the Grande Roche Hotel where the Fairbairn Capital Trophy Wine Show (what an unattractive, clumsy mouthful that name is) was being held.

For many of the others gathering there on Sunday evening, it was similarly a matter of déja vu. For me, this was my first involvement in such a large-scale wine-judging event, and I was apprehensive, excited, and unsure of what the next three or four days would hold. I was particularly looking forward to meeting Jancis, for whom I have great respect as a wine writer and commentator. I was also dubious about the whole event and whether I should be participating - never having found the results of big tastings to be convincing or useful. Now I'd put myself on the other side, in a sense.

So there we assembled in the hotel lobby - a dozen judges, some organisers, assorted partners - renewing old acquaintanceships and making new ones.

Dinner was relaxed. Bosman's restaurant restrained itself to a mere three courses (not counting the occasional amuse-bouche), and show chair Michael Fridjhon had left off his bow-tie. After his formal welcome, he outlined procedures for the next few days, and resolved any problems. Such as how to use the strange Riedel tasting glasses. No one seems to like these hollow-stemmed objects, and it was decided they should be filled higher than the stem (how the designer would wince!), so that we could easily swirl the wine in our accustomed way. (If you must know, you're meant to tip the glass onto its side, roll the tot of wine around its generous bowl, pick it up to sniff the spread-about aromas, and take a taste - holding the glass by the foot so as not to warm the wine that has returned to the hollow stem ... something like that. Too elaborate, anyway, when you're tasting a hundred-odd wines.)

The judges had brought wines for dinner. Gyles Webb, for example, contributed a fine 1993 Thelema riesling - which reinforced my intentions with my magnum of Welgemeend 1987: I wanted to remind people that the Cape had produced some decent wine before 1994, despite a myth to the contrary that seems to be growing. I'd also brought an older Austrian riesling, and there was a good mix of foreign and local stuff.

Inevitably, more discussion followed about wine shows, and this one in particular. For obvious reasons, I wondered about the role of the associate judges. James Halliday, who has probably judged at more shows (mostly Australian ones, of course, of the type on which this one is modelled) than anyone else in the history of the world, was enlightening. He took the opportunity to exact a little revenge, I think, for my earlier lighthearted suggestion that perhaps Australia's contribution to world wine culture was not necessarily of the very highest. Associates' opinions are pretty well despised, he cheerfully told me, and they're generally known as dogs. Their scores are, of course, not counted, although the chair of the panel might consider them, especially in the event of disagreement between the other (proper!) judges - and if the associate provides the chair with support for his/her own position, the chances of being taken seriously are that much greater!

Despite being reassured as to my insignificance in the grand competitive scheme of things, I woke in the middle of the night in a panic. Wasn't I a bit out of my depth here? Would I make a fool of myself?

Monday
Breakfast over, at 8.30 we gathered at the hotel's conference centre, and were divided into three panels, each consisting of three judges and one dog. Off to work - mine consisting of 110 Chardonnays, half which were already poured and awaiting the judicial efforts of me, Tony Mossop, Rod Easthope and our chair, James Halliday. We plunged straight in.

After a dozen or so wines, we compared scores, to check that we were all - more or less - calibrated. We seemed to be so - more or less. So we put our heads down and continued to sniff, swirl and spit, our concentration interrupted only occasionally by a faulty wine, requiring a fresh bottle to be opened and poured. Generally the second bottle was fine. In one case it was not, but Halliday was reluctant to call for a third: even if that one were to be OK, he says, the chances of a customer buying a faulty bottle of this particular wine are clearly high.

When the first tableful of wines were completed we jointly considered the wines one by one, after all the scores were recorded. My specific job was to note down an agreed brief description of each medal-winning wine, for Icons, the book-of-the-tasting, as it were. No problem in assigning a final score if the judges were all pretty much in agreement. If not, a bit of discussion was necessary - the last thing wanted was a wishy-washy average. Major discrepancies of opinion meant longer debate, and the Show Chair was always available for advice.

But the process was invariably amicable and respectful - everyone had to back down occasionally and fit in with the majority if attempts to persuade them failed. It was impressive to hear even James Halliday saying occasionally that 'Well, perhaps I was just wrong about that one' - (though I have a little suspicion that he didn't really believe it!).

After a welcome break, we returned to the replenished table to repeat the process with the remaining wines. Overall, no-one was overly enthusiastic about the Chardonnays we had tasted, and there were no clear gold-medallists; but we had marked out some for futher consideration and, also invoking opinions from Michael Fridjhon, who came to taste them, we were eventually happy to raise a couple clear of the field. Scores were handed over to the independent auditor and entered straight onto her computer spreadsheet.

Apart from anything else, day one had already revealed four things to me. Firstly, the enormous amount of organisation and impressive work behind the scenes; most obviously, marshalled by Celia Gilloway of Wine magazine, hundreds of bottles were systematically dealt with, with backups readily available, all kept at the right temperature, opened and poured. Second, if results were not plausible, it would not be because the judges did not try extremely diligently to get things right. Third, there was a genuine attempt, at least, to look for the more reticent, elegant wines that can so easily get lost amid the clamour of brasher wines in a big lineup. Fourth, any awards made would, for a change, be meaningful - the threshold to bronze was not easily crossed.

Later, dinner was grand (brightly bow-tied Fridjhon, many courses of splendid food), with a number of actuaries and other mysterious money-people representing the clearly very generous sponsors. It became even clearer what a white (and elite) affair was unfolding.

Tuesday
The whole business of a wine show like this can seem a glamorous assignment, especially amidst the luxury of the Grande Roche and with all the extravagant loveliness of the Cape winelands lying all about in autumn sunshine. But try confronting a table loaded with wine samples at nine in the morning, and the glamour seems far away.

If Monday was hard work, Tuesday - the first red wine day - was tougher. The shuffled panels were announced and allocated their duties. I was relieved to not be with the team tasting 145 Cabernets, and at first felt lightly let off with 117 youthful, tannic Shirazes and a handful of Pinot Noirs. (Why were only nine entered? Is it that available quantities are insufficient to easily meet this show's requirement, or do the producers - not unreasonably - simply mistrust their delicate beauties to the untender mercies of a tasting panel?)

Jancis Robinson (the panel chair), Neil Pendock, Rod Easthope and I settled to our task, quickly sorting out the Pinots and then tackling the Shirazes about twenty at a time. There is undoubtedly an aspect of training and fitness to this sort of wine-tasting. Someone like James Halliday, with continued practice added to genuine aptitude and practised skill, is probably as fit as one can be, and Jancis probably up there too. I had never tasted this many red wines in one go, and found it immensely difficult to retain concentration and a sense of judgement with the last few dozen wines - though my scoring proved not too eccentric, in fact, at least not in comparison to the scores of my superiors.

Talking to some others later revealed that they had also found the red wines enormously taxing. And this is of course the real problem with big shows: are the judicial palates as fairly discriminating on wine number 99 as they were on wine number 9? (Even on number 9 is a sniff and taste an adequate way of judging a wine?) Are those tiring palates going to demand ratcheted-up dimensions for a later wine to have an effect?

We staggered out around five o'clock, weary. The poor Cabernet people were not yet done. Observing the purple-grins and grimaces all around me, and knowing that my teeth were as unappealing - not to mention being chewed up by the continous flow of acid over them - was not reassuring. Altogether, as the sun went down on Tuesday I was depressed, feeling both abused and abuser. 'This is not the way you want to relate to wine!' I admonished myself, resolving to never take part in something like this again. (I might change my mind, of course - but would they have me back anyway?)

Wednesday
It was all starting to feel like a little world in itself, with wine as the primary social reality. Doesn't everyone discuss cork problems over breakfast? Isn't it of universal concern at 8am whether brettanomyces can ever be desirable?

Possibly aided by the acclimatisation, and after the trauma of the previous day's torture-by-shiraz, Wednesday proved much more enjoyable. We started tasting a bit later, as the photographer was let loose amongst us - determined, I suppose, to take his pictures while were were still smiling and approximately white-toothed. When we resumed our labours, I was in Richard Kelley's team, with Angela Lloyd and, again, Rod Easthope - we knew each other well, and that made for a more relaxed atmosphere. Also, we were dealing with a host of smaller categories - from Cabernet Franc to Vintage Port, which was inevitably much easier than the monolithic grind of the day before.

As I had been each day so far, I was surprised how many really ordinary and sub-ordinary wines had been entered. Do producers ever taste their own wines? Even granted the element of lottery in a big competitive tasting like this, do they really think there is a chance of a medal for their acidic, oak-chipped little number - or even for the pleasanter but essentially nondescript version? In Wednesday's line-up, too, there seemed to be more than usual inherently faulty wines. Surely, again, their producers must realise that they have either a serious problem in their cellars, or else that a particular wine had been landed with a run of faulty corks.

A dinner of great magnificence. How extraordinary that we all seemed to be ready for more fine food - and even wine! We had got used over the last days to a steady supply of unfailingly excellent meals (the only problems being surprisingly poor coffee, and the bizarre lack of marmalade on the lavish breakfast buffet - and Tony Mossop's bitter complaints saw to the latter being remedied). This final repast, though, was a culmination, and well worth having sat through those hundreds of wines to reach.
Plus, we were just about done.

Thursday
The final day. It was something of a treat to have a mere nineteen wines to taste and all pretty good ones - the gold medal-winners, which the judges in concert were to score and thus select those to receive trophies. Of course, we still had no idea of the wines' identities - although with a few of them one could take educated guesses: no doubt, for example, that the brilliant anonymous 'white blend' was the Vergelegen, and the fine 1998 Vintage Port was Bredell. The scores were all taken down, and while auditor Melanie proceeded with the arithmetic, we trooped off for the press conference, and then our last lunch together.

And so, a surprisingly long time after it all began, we all began to disperse - some to catch aeroplanes, some - like the indefatigable Jancis Robinson - to meetings and further tastings with local winemakers, others, like me, blissfully homeward. As I drove away, memories and impressions joggled for precendence: A feeling of having made a great and arduous contribution to human culture? Well, no, not quite, though frequently arduous. Having done one's best at a job doomed to real imperfection? Yes, perhaps. The camaraderie of serious wine-lovers working and playing together? Certainly.
And I was ultimately very grateful for the opportunity that had been given me. But now, on reflection, I'm pretty sure what my abiding single memory of those days will be - and I'm a little embarassed to say that it is nothing vinous: rather, it is the perfection of the foie gras crême brulée at the last grand dinner....