Our monthly tasting group was this month hosted by Chris Williams, winemaker at both Meerlust and The Foundry; he will hopefully be able to add the letters 'MW' (Master of Wine) behind his name in the not too distant future. This year, Chris passed his theory papers, next year he aims to pass the tasting and go on to the final task, writing a dissertation.

As we tasted (blind) the nine 'alternative Old World varieties' he had selected as his theme (ie no chardonnay or sauvignon blanc), we fell to discussing various aspects of how to pass the MW tasting exam, in which Chris is being expertly tutored by our own SA domiciled MW, Cathy van Zyl. It seems today much emphasis is put on identifying quality - high, medium or low. Low doesn't imply bad, more at the simple, commercial end of the scale.

Chris kindly started the line up with a German Riesling; I say 'kindly' because it was typical and easy to recognise. I also guessed it was a Mosel, others that it was of Spatlese level and dry, but we couldn't agree on quality as for some it had a hint of mustiness but the general consensus was 'medium'. It turned out to be a Markus Molitor Zeltingen Sonnenuhr Spätlese Trocken 1994. And so it continued with some aspects of each wine being identified, usually country of origin or age but rarely variety and never the total story! Quality though seemed much easier for us all to agree on, especially when we tried the first real classy wine of the evening.

We all gave it the thumbs up for high quality, so felt even more stupid for not recognising grüner veltliner, a variety we've all tasted on many occasions and this Willi Bründlmayer 2004 Alte Reben from Kamptal is a classic example. Shame on us!

The Giustiniana Gavi de Gavi 2007 also struck us as being very good, again without total recognition, but we should have felt less shame with non-identification of the last wine Bruce Jack's The Charge 2007, a barrel-fermented viura from Rioja - atypical but of impressive quality.

It was interesting that agreement came more readily on quality rather than origin or variety. Perhaps with time our other recognition antennae will improve!