Decanter is a wine magazine sold in 92 countries and is well established enough to have its own world wine awards.

Wine judging is a complex business and can be a volatile mixture of exotic numeric scoring mechanisms, medals and stars. It all depends on which system is used. Without a level playing field you really need to read up on each method before interpreting the results. If you have some time then here is a good summary of various systems out there.

Normally this all translates into a pretty medal style sticker on a bottle, which the consumer blindly trusts to mean that the wine is a sort of Usain Bolt (who has just won the 100m sprint in a world record 9.58 seconds, against stiff competition) and outstanding in its field.

Occasionally a great value wine comes out on top. And this year Asda's £2.98 Portuguese Rose beat almost 300 others to be 'Commended' by Decanter. I am unsure exactly what commended means in Decanter speak, but it is a step above 'no award' and a step below 'Bronze'.

If we ever get a summer I may consider buying a case, although my experience of Portuguese rose was not a pleasant one.

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