One day, your editor says wouldn’t it be fun to hold a wine tasting for The Independent Magazine. Your editor is always right, so you agree that yes, hosting a wine tasting for your editor, the Saturday Magazine editor and the rest of the staff on the Independent Magazine would indeed be fun. Imagine cooking dinner for your boss, her boss and his boss and you start to get the picture.

Then you start wondering how to organise it in such a way that not only does everyone have lots of fun but also that you also please all your editors - as well as impressing the Editor-in-Chief of the Independent who, it is rumoured, may just turn up. A fun evening all round, then. At the 11th hour, the room you’ve booked is cancelled, but this turns out to be a stroke of luck because into the breach steps one Mark Hix, chef extraordinaire, who not only offers to hold the tasting chez lui but also says he’d like to cook for the entire Magazine. And that’s some cooking, believe me.

Back to the wine tasting - and it’s clear that the only way of holding the attention of a bunch of rowdy journalists is to play options, a fun and informative game invented by the late Len Evans in Australia. You can play it with two, three, four people, or as many as you like. In trooped the Magazine to Mark Hix’s house and as I started to get out the spittoons ready for the tasting, I heard the Nick, the Picture Editor, ask: “What’s a spittoon?” I soon realised they were going to be redundant.

There were 15 of us, so it made sense to divide everyone into teams of three. Mark Hix volunteered to captain one outfit; another was led by the magazine editor Laurence with Chris Hirst (The Weasel) as one of his sidekicks; my sub-editor, Jamie and his cronies formed another; my editor Madeleine teamed up with two colleagues – and, finally, a formidable, somewhat raucous alliance of our restaurant critics John Walsh and Tracey MacLeod, along with Matthew Fort, of another parish.

And so to the game. Making sure you’ve masked the bottles in advance, you pour everyone a glass (a bottle is OK for 15 normal people and proved just about OK for 15 journalists). You then give a set of options, asking the team leaders to put up a hand if they think the wine is (a) New World or (b) Old World. Those who get the answer wrong, query your definitions, smoke or make too much noise, are eliminated from that round. You then ask multiple choice questions in threes.

So, in the case of the first wine, a Quincy from the Loire Valley, the questions might be, first, ‘is it from (a) France (b) Italy or (c) Germany? For those who get it right, the next question might be ‘(a) is it from Bordeaux (b) the Languedoc or (c) the Loire, and then ‘is it (a) chardonnay (b) sauvignon blanc or (c) sauvignon gris? And so so. The winner is the last individual or team still in. If more than one team survives, you can also insert a tie-breaker (vintage, price etc.) or award points to each.

I had brought along 12 bottles, some available in the UK, others not. After a sake ice breaker (Mark guessed it was a sake), we played the game with two wines at a time, so there was a link with each pair. First up was the 2006 Quincy and with it an expressive 2007 Blind River Sauvignon Blanc, £9.99, Oddbins, so the link was the sauvignon blanc grape, illustrating the difference between a minerally Loire sauvignon and the more pungently assertive New Zealand style.

The second pair was a 2005 Trimbach Riesling, £7.62 - £8.09, The Wine Society, www.winedirect.com, and a 2001 Pewsey Vale Eden Valley Contours Museum Release Riesling (the 2002 is £11.99, Selfridges, Jeroboams, Planet Of The Grapes, Berry Bros.), the first aromatic, fresh, youthful and dry; the second with the telltale toast and kerosene undertones of age which my wine-knowledgeable sub-editor spotted as Australian riesling, even venturing that it might be Clare Valley. As he was close - and also my sub-editor - his team earned an extra half point. To break the grape variety routine for the first pair of reds, I chose a location theme, the Middle East, by pairing an Israeli merlot with a Lebanese cinsault blend. Both of which came as surprises, not so much because they were wonderful, but because they were drinkable.

Down to the hard stuff: a pair of pinot noirs, a Vosne-Romanée and a New Zealand pinot noir. I love the Vosne, a 2004 Syvian Cathiard, £270 per case, Justerini & Brooks (in bond), but the fragrant rich 2005 Bald Hills Pinot Noir (the 2006 is £24.95, New Zealand House of Wine, 01428 707733; www.nzhouseofwine.co.uk), went down equally well, with John Walsh admitting it had never occurred to him that kiwi red could be so good. Next up, a rich, mature Cahors, 2000 Le Cèdre Grande Cuvée, £19.95, Lea & Sandeman, and an Argentinian single vineyard 2004 Trapiche. The link? The malbec grape.

Finally, two Aussie shirazes, a humdrum 2005 The Red Sedan Shiraz, £6.92, Laithwaites, and a concentrated 2004 Jim Barry The Armagh Shiraz, around £80, Waitrose (selected fine wine stores), Tanners of Shrewsbury, Selfridges, Noel Young Wines, Philglas & Swiggot. The link? Price. So could they tell that the first was an everyday red and The Armagh a £50 plus job? Most could tell that the second was the better wine, but didn’t realise it was that much better. With the spittoons forlornly empty, the journalists had reverted to type. And the winner? The team headed up by the Magazine Editor Laurence - nothing to do with the fact that I was doing the scoring, honest.

Ends

Something For the Weekend 19 April 2008

Under a Fiver

2006 Radcliffe’s Haut Poitou Sauvignon VDQS, Haut-Poitou, £6.99 / £4.66 on 342, Thresher / Wine Rack

There’s life yet in the old VDQS (vin délimite de qualité supérieure), a halfway house between appellation contrôlée and vins de pays, yet , as this aromatic and refreshingly juicy, gooseberryish Loire sauvignon blanc clearly shows; a perfect everyday springtime dry white.

Under a Tenner

2005 Tesco Finest Alsace Pinot Gris, Cave de Turckheim, £6.25

Several cuts above your average Alsace pinot gris, the grape also known as pinot grigio, this is a rich, spicy and delicately honeyed example of the variety crafted into quality shape by the Caves de Turckheim, one of the Vosge Mountain region’s consistently most serious co-operatives.

Splash Out

2006 Gladstone Pinot Noir, around £13.75, Great Western Wine Company, Bath (01225 322800 / www.greatwesternwine.co.uk), Oenotheque, Chiddingfold (01428 652887), Noel Young Wines, Cambridge (01223 566744), The Fine Wine Company, Edinburgh (0131 665 0088).

Not many of the world’s wines are made Scottish women but this New Zealand pinot noir from North Island’s Wairarapa is made by Christine Kernohan who moved to New Zealand from Glasgow with husband David nearly 30 years ago. Good move: at this price, this pinot’s raspberryish fragrance and pure, berry fruit is a delight.