London Business School triumphs

Last night's blind-tasting competition between alumni of some of the world's top business school was won resoundingly by London Business School, as you can see below.

It was sponsored as usual by Pol Roger and hosted as usual by me, in premises high above Canary Wharf in London owned by Barclays Wealth, whose team did rather well on their wine-tasting debut. The picture suggests the room was smoky but in fact it was just my smeary lens. My job has evolved from early days involving counting cardboard paddles to rather a doddle, thanks to electronic voting. We have been doing this for so long, with many of the same participants, that we can't remember whether this was the tenth anniversary or not.

The wines, four whites and four reds, are always chosen by James Simpson MW of Pol Roger, many of them from their own portfolio. Thus, the most difficult wine to my mind (I always taste the wines blind myself first, without the prompt of the multiple choice of answers) was Cousiño Macul, Doña Isabel Riesling 2009 Maipo. Riesling from Maipo, one of Chile's hottest wine regions? No wonder it smelt of hair oil.

The best-performing wine in a way was Sam Neill's Two Paddocks Pinot Noir 2008 Central Otago, which most tasters guessed as French and therefore presumably burgundy rather than New Zealand.

Many congratulations to all participants who blind tasted to a very high standard, it seemed to me. And many thanks to them for the £2,500 they raised for Hospice at Home in Cumbria.