I did my first two days’ tasting in Decanter’s new HQ last week – the Blue Fin Building. The building belongs to Decanter’s owner, IPC Media, so sharing space with all that wine expertise is someone who knows everything you always wanted to know (and probably rather more) about Cage and Aviary Birds, Wedding Flowers and Caravan. Decanter is a sister-title of the influential Chat – It’s Fate, which I hear is much read in foreign capitals by those who wish to understand the British psyche and genius.

Decanter's Blue Fin Building

Externally, the building looks like yet another wasted architectural opportunity for London, and its hinterland is dismal Southwark. (Internally, it’s attractive and airy; the meeting rooms are named after great typefaces: bravo.) The Blue Fin does, though, stand just behind Tate Modern, a building which leaves few indifferent. This former power station was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, and is architecturally admired.

I find it hideous and oppressive, though it’s hard to imagine how any building originally serving that function might not have been. Inside, by contrast, the space is magnificent, and the Herzog and De Meuron conversion (the same Swiss architects who designed Christian Moueix’s new cellars for Hosanna) is well-conceived and executed. I love the architectural groves of beech trees at the front, too, and the wonderful Millennium Footbridge. There is a giant spider there at the moment.

Decanter occupies the 10th Floor of the Blue Fin – the first floor of the recessed upper section, so there is a terrace in front of the north-facing tasting room looking directly over Tate Modern towards St Paul’s. One of the other shortlisted architects for the Tate Modern conversion had proposed demolishing the 99m high chimney. I found myself wishing he or she had won.

Another day at the office

This is, I think, the fourth Decanter tasting room I have served in, and is certainly the best so far. (I remember earlier versions interlacing the railway approaches to Victoria, when all the tasters used to share the same glass of each sample.)

Jean-Francois Mau finds the PreuillacWe were, this time, tasting Cru Bourgeois 2005s for the March edition. I won’t leak the results, but recommend you check them out in due course since there will be plenty of fine-value purchases. Most readers will be shocked, I suspect, when they discover which commune performed best.

I enjoy Decanter tastings since they are now exceptionally well-organised, and every effort is made to track down all the leading contenders for the topic under scrutiny (which hasn’t always been the case in the past). The scoring and ranking system is quietly effective, though it’s a shame that the scores of the wines placed in the ‘Highly Recommended’ and ‘Award Winners’ category go missing.

The chief way in which they might be faulted is for a lack of personality: the results are presented very much as a committee verdict, in succinct and sometimes clipped tones. In today’s wine world, where personality counts for so much, this can seem a little chilly and neutral.

Mr Peppercorn tastesCompounded committee scores tend to be naturally restrained (is there a mathematical formula for this?) since the wings of individual enthusiasm are nearly always trimmed by one or more of the other tasters. This may be why Decanter tasting scores and results are quoted far less often than rival Wine Spectator tasting results, which come with more ‘personality’ and numerical drama attached.

An experienced committee, by contrast, might be considered more reliable than a single taster, even if duller. Succinctness is also a benefit: quoting even one taster on all of the wines would take far more space, and quoting them all would lead to impossibly verbose results. (For most tastings, by the way, each taster on each day tastes just half the wines shown — adding to the primacy of the committee over the individual members of the team.)

Any thoughts, pro or contra?