Judging in Shanghai has gone smoothly, has been successful and is now finished. The inevitable camaraderie that blossoms between judges is still in its first flush, and the wine flowed freely at the celebration dinner held in a 'hot' new boutique restaurant (that's what they call them), Madison, in the French Concession.

So freely, I think there were 16 bottles between 14 of us, that there were just empties left on the table - along with a few ice buckets press-ganged into spittoons - when we stepped out into the neo-lit Shanghai night.

Chief judge, Johnny Quarisa, had brought along a wine that shared its birth year with me - a 1963 Croft Vintage Port. Described by The Vintage Port Site as 'a monumental vintage of legendary proportions that needs no introduction', 1963 was declared by all the major port houses. They were lucky people, given that harvests that year were disastrous practically everywhere else.

The wine was tawny in colour, with a delicate tea leaf and faint cranberry nose. The palate, too, was mature with integrated tannins, and a soft, bordering on toffee, character. The site suggests that the vintage is 'ready to drink now with some wines only just beginning to show full maturity.' I thought our example just a past its best, although deserving of respect and affection for all the years it had put in.

I'd brought the Etienne le Riche cab; it was poured alongside a Margaux, Chateau Kirwan 2004. This Bordeaux vintage was cooler than that of the preceding year, and so wines are more traditionally styled and structured wines (or leaner, less fleshy) than those of riper vintages. For me, the two, stood together against the mostly Australian reds on the table. While wines from all three countries were well balanced and complex, those from Australia had greater concentration and fruit complexity while the French and South Africa were leaner, tauter and more savoury.

By that stage in the evening, I didn't get much feedback, except from a New Zealand judge who makes a very fine pinot noir; John Belsham from Foxes Island. He came around from his end of the table to quietly say how composed and understated he'd found the wine. John's CV says that he found himself broke in Bordeaux in the 1970s and so sought out a vintage job at Chateau Saturnin to keep him going. After the harvest, he was asked to stay on as a winemaking apprentice, and so he did for five years before returning home.