By Charlie Brown
I’ll admit it; my idea of meeting a celebrity is spotting Oz Clarke at a tasting, or 
bumping into Steven Spurrier. So when I was given the opportunity to be a judge at the Wine Merchant Magazine’s Top 50 wines for independents, however excited I was to be part of the day, my biggest thought was, ‘amazing, I get to meet Olly Smith.’
The Wine Merchant Magazine top 50 was a competition to find the best 50 wines sent in from distributors and vineyards around the world, exclusive to the independent trade. Chief judges were Olly Smith and the Observer’s wine critic David Williams and there were 16 other judges, all from independent wine shops like us.
Charlie trying to look professional
There were 383 wines to get through which is no mean feat, especially when tasting started at 9am. I was on a mini judging team with two of the top independent wine shop owners, Hal Wilson from Cambridge Wine Merchants and Philip Amps from Amps Wines. Intimidated much.
All tasting was blind but we knew what region the wine was from. There were some surprises in there; I expected to love a sparkling rose from Hampshire, but much preferred the Lambrusco it was up against. We had a Viognier from Chile that was clearly made with Torrontes. The premium Spanish reds didn’t compare to the Portuguese.
Having Philip and Hal on my team was great; you can learn a lot watching two seasoned wine tasters.
So what did I learn?
1) (I knew this one already) you need stamina when tasting. 6 hours on your feet, hundreds of wines to try is not the jolly people might think it is. But they’re so important, so we can find lovely wines for our lovely customers.
2) Independent wine merchants are really happy to give advice to the newbies like us. Which is a little bit more than useful.
3) A lot of the indies have done a lot of travelling to vineyards and this really is the best way to learn about wine. Watch out vineyards, we’re coming your way.
And the top 50? They haven’t been announced yet but we’ll make sure we publish them for you; and no doubt some of them will be ending up in our shop soon.
Thanks to the Wine Merchant Magazine for the opportunity to judge in such a great competition.
Vino Vero 