Off to the Decanter World Wine Awards tastings every day last week, medal-hunting with the Regional France and Languedoc-Roussillon panels. I can’t reveal any of the results, obviously; indeed I don’t know them yet myself in any useful sense, since all we’ve done is award medals to unidentified wines. What I can do is pass on a little of flavour of the week, and try to explain why it’s so enjoyed by its participants.

Reason one is that, for most of us who toil in this stony vineyard, it’s the best-paid five days of the year. Those acting as Regional Chairmen get to earn somewhere between a quarter and a half of what most bankers or barristers earn in a week (rather than the fifth, tenth or twentieth we are used to). Not only singular, but motivating! And we enjoyed a concluding lunch at the outstandingly good Enoteca Turi in Putney on Friday...

Reason two is that it is a collegiate week in a sometimes lonely life. Not lonely in the novelists’ sense, of course, since all forms of journalism are by definition social; but as a freelance you are captain and crew of your own ship, and the sea is a wide one, and there’s usually a squall or two on the horizon. Whereas this week someone else is in charge, and we sea dogs can compare logs, swop anecdotes, and quietly note what everyone else looks like after another year’s heavy weather.

We all enjoy tasting, of course, otherwise the job would be untenable – and this is an exceptionally well-organised tasting (modelled on the much-admired Australian show system) The excitement of hunting for medals, especially those elusive golds for under £5 wines, is palpable. We get great support from the ‘redshirts’ who bring the bottles and cart away the verdict-strewn debris – thank you, David and Fangyung.

Yes … it’s people, mostly.

One of the long-running riffs of the competition is the paucity of medals awarded by the notoriously fastidious Rhône panel chaired by ‘the beast of Bexhill’: John Livingstone-Learmonth. My own panels taste adjacent to John’s, and every year we wait for the moment when, in the midst of our meditative tasterly silence, the Chevalier kicks back his chair, raises both slender arms to the sky and canters round the room chanting ‘The Rhône has got a gold!’ This year it came on Wednesday at 16:05. John loves to needle Tom Stevenson about this, as Tom’s Champagne panel sometimes seems to confuse gold medals with confetti. Tom counters that his average price is far higher than anyone else’s, and it would therefore be a disgrace if gold wasn’t relatively thick on the ground in his patch. Australia is also considered a medal machine by the parsimonious Chevalier – but Australia gets more entries than anyone else. Indeed Regional Chairman Michael Hill-Smith told me he would like to see more tasting speed in general in the Decanter competition. I don’t think the Chevalier, famous for his densely analytical notes on every wine submitted, would approve.

We are in at least three rooms (or is it four?), so I don’t get to eavesdrop on everyone. Some voices carry better than others. It’s hard, in our room, to ignore the professorial Giles MacDonogh as he shepherds his German and Austrian panellists forward, nudged by Prussian and Teutonic asides; and the finely polished vowels of Margaret Rand (considered, by most, an auditory double for the Duchess of Windsor) rang out clearly this year, seasoned with peals of laughter, from the dense thickets of Bordeaux Supérieure and Entre-Deux-Mers.

Michel Bettane joined us for two days, and his voice, too, has the effortless carrying power of a man schooled at both ends of a classroom. Having been put through the mincer on my panel with an entire day of Vins de Pays d’Oc, he was rewarded with a day in the company of the civilised Burgundy panel chaired by one of the wine world’s natural diplomats, Michael Schuster. Michel B. endearingly began many of the Vins de Pays d’Oc flights with a breezy gallic “Allez ‘oop!”, tasted in a matter of seconds, and then gave polished technical reasons for almost all of his verdicts. (The rest were explained by that ineffable shrug the French as a nation have perfected.) My favourite Bettane soundbite of the day came in a Merlot flight. “Chocolate is the beginning of death.” Remember that, chocoholics.

We also learned all about the importance of blue in the creation of colours for rosé wines, and learned that Corsica should be majoring on white wine. (Actually I’ve always thought that. Most of Provence, too.) Michel’s highly technical style must, I reasoned, have gone down well in Australia – and Michael Hill-Smith, who had invited him over to taste at the Australian shows he chairs, confirmed that ‘he was great’ and that everyone who tasted with him learned a lot. Michel (yes I know everyone in this paragraph is called either Michael or Michel; I blame the parents) was very impressed with the level of discussion in Australia – and with Australian professionals’ understanding and knowledge of great European wine. “The problem,” he added perceptively, “is that they don’t let themselves make the sort of wine they love most.”

Downstairs (at The Worx in Parson’s Green) is an area where we meet, drink coffee, and have lunch, and that’s where one can catch up with those chairing panels in different rooms. There’s also a table where whatever is left in the bottles which have been awarded gold medals that day is put out for everyone to have a look at, giving rise to another of the favourite games of the week: pouring scorn on other panels’ gold medals. “That got gold? I’d have asked for another bottle …” It probably doesn’t help that the table in positioned in full afternoon sunlight. I advocate charity and compassion at this stage. (The bottles have been through a lot to get there.)

It’s particularly good to catch up with those who have crossed the seas to reach exotic Fulham – like Ch’ng Poh Tiong from Singapore, who was telling me that China isn’t quite El Dorado just yet (unless you happen to be selling Lafite). It’s good to talk politics briefly with Richard Baudains from Italy. When I asked about Berlusconi’s latest election victory, Richard told me the story of a Northumbrian friend of his who used to carry a card signed by his doctor, back in the days of Margaret Thatcher, which read “My patient has an unusual heart condition and it is very important that his calmness and peace of mind are maintained at all times. Mention of the name ‘Thatcher’ should be avoided at all costs …”

Bordeaux-based James Lawther is another good friend who I am always happy to see, relishing his wry, gentle take on that region of plutocrats and paupers. And getting together on my panel with ex-Safeway buyer Matthew Stubbs is one of the treats of the year. Matthew’s supermarket days are far behind him now – having spent some years in Minervois, he and his family now live in Corbières – and his insights into the Languedoc are unmatched. Ditto for Provence with another Master of Wine, Elizabeth Gabay. Isabelle Bachelard joined us for the second year this year, and she, of course, knows the entire country (warts and all) as only a native can. Liz Berry MW, also Provence-based, is triply valuable: she’s not only got a fine palate for the unusually beautiful and the beautifully unusual, but she writes great tasting notes in legible script. (Even Michel Bettane was impressed …) Great notes, too, from would-be MW Tim Wildman of Caves de Pyrène this year. Justin Howard-Sneyd of Waitrose (another MW) keeps us up to date with the high-street palate, and Simon Field (yet another MW) of Berry Bros with what the bankers and barristers are looking for.

I’m only sad that I won’t necessarily be around to take part next year. No, I’m not about to peg it (so far as I know), but I have another major project of a different sort in the pipeline … of which more, much more, on these pages in due course.