SHORTLY after joining the Independent as its wine correspondent, I was parachuted like a nervous first-day-at-school boy into my first-ever wine competition.

It was the return leg of the Qantas Cup taste-off at the Mondavi winery in Napa Valley between California and Australia. UK wine personality Oz Clarke and I were the two "international judges." It was our impossible job to keep the peace between the warring factions of the Australian team (Len Evans OBE, James Halliday and Ian McKenzie) and the American team (Terry Robards, Darryl Corti and Anthony Dias Blue).

I was recently reminded of this nerve-racking blind-tasting encounter because I bumped into the now somewhat portlier Dias Blue who was one of the judges at this year's China Wine Challenge in Shanghai.

"Yes, the Aussies creamed us," admitted Dias Blue, whose team were shot down in flames in all wine categories except pinot noir.

Whether it was because I gave a good score to his Rothbury Chardonnay in the Qantas Cup contest I'll never know because, sadly, Len Evans is no longer with us, but Australia's larger-than-life wine personality invited me to judge at the Canberra Show in Australia the following year.

It kicked off a long and wonderful association with Australia in particular and wine competitions in general. Australia is the country that in my experience has taken its wine competitions the most seriously.

Organized by the state horticultural societies, alongside competitions for best sheep, pigs and cows, the state shows are designed to highlight both the quality and emerging styles of wines.

In the past, the objective was to give the wine industry a better handle on improvements in technique and developments in wine trends. In today's more marketing-savvy world, the trend has been for wine companies to use the results as a way of promoting their medal-winning wines to consumers.

As a postage stamp-size wine producer, the UK has had no need of such industry standards. On the other side of the coin, in one of the world's biggest wine importing countries, consumers are thirsty for what-to-buy information on the bewildering number of wines on the shelf of their local supermarket, high street retailer or independent wine merchant.

Wine columns apart, one of the best ways of finding out what's hot and what's not is through wine competitions, and we have at least two giant such competitions, The Decanter World Wine Awards and the International Wine Challenge.

I won't try and compare the two. For one thing, I chair one of the panels at the Decanter World Wine Awards. For another, both tend to fulfil similar functions. Tasting the wines blind, judges sift the wheat from the chaff in order to highlight the best wines by awarding Olympic-style gold, silver and bronze medals. The results, along with tasting notes, are disseminated as widely as possibly through the media, the wine trade and the Internet in order to reach consumers.

In only its third year, the China Wine Challenge, which took place at the Hilton Shanghai hotel from July 17-20, is still a toddler by comparison. It grew out of the Japan Wine Challenge, which Tokyo wine merchant Ron Brown organized with Robert Joseph, one of the pioneers of the International Wine Challenge, back in the 1990s.

Ron Brown, who had observed the evolution of the Chinese wine market from the early 1980s, started doing business in China with his own Australian brand Maverick, and decided that the time was ripe for China to emulate the success of Japan with its own wine competition.

Brown chose Chinese mainland over Hong Kong and Shanghai in particular, because it had, in his view, become the lead city for wine culture, education, food and restaurants, not to mention a magnet to shopaholics and art lovers.

"I started coming to Chinese mainland quite a lot," says Brown, "and I saw at first hand a very real evolution and a huge need for wine education. The Chinese are very quick and they're very thirsty (pardon the pun) for knowledge. The primary objective of the China Wine Challenge is to work with the trade to educate and promote to the consumer and, in addition, to the trade and media. Last year I was astonished at the substantial coverage in over 100 media in China and I've been impressed by the continuing interest of the media."

I wasn't a judge at the inaugural China Wine Challenge in 2010 but I first came to Shanghai last year as a judge under Steven Spurrier as chairman and this year Lynne Sherriff, president of the Institute of Masters of Wine.

The wines are organized through more than a dozen of China's major wine importers since, unlike in Europe, it's tricky to get wine samples direct from the winery as each wine has to go through the cumbersome procedures required by the Chinese authorities.

Most of the wines are imported although there is a small section of Chinese wines and this year, for the first time, a Best Value award alongside an award for Best Chinese Red and White.

Each of the five panels is headed over two days by an international judge sitting with three or four Chinese judges drawn from the ranks of sommeliers, educators and winemakers. The reputation of wine competitions stands or falls by their efficiency, integrity and above all the caliber of their judges and I truly believe that the standard of the Chinese judges is high and growing with each passing year.

This year's Chinese judges for instance included experienced names such as Frankie Zhao, who won the Bollinger Foundation prize, and winemaker Li Demei. Importers' representatives are encouraged to attend as observers but for the sake of impartiality, not to judge.

Among the most interesting aspects of this year's competition were the new Best Value Award and the awards for Best Chinese Red and White. China is an economic powerhouse but as growth decelerates, the issue of wine value is becoming increasingly significant to China's admittedly huge middle class of some 300 million people.

Ron Brown estimates that 75-80 percent of imported wine is sold at 140 yuan (US$22) or less. Since economic factors will impact on purchasing power generally, to single out wines costing 140 yuan or less is a positive signal to those looking for value in wine.

A total of 11 trophies were awarded in a tally that included 24 gold and 91 silver medals. The number of entries of Chinese wines themselves is as yet still small compared to overseas entries.

Yet the high quality of the trophy-winning 2010 Silver Heights Family Reserve and 2010 Grace Vineyard Tasya Reserve Chardonnay showed the art of the possible. As confidence grows in the quality of wines produced by China in its own backyard, we can expect to see, and I hope we will, many more home-grown Chinese wines entering the competition.



For more information on the China Wine Challenge including the full results, check the website: www.http://chinawinechallenge.net/