High-pressure industry standards

The annual wine-tasting extravaganza in Bordeaux must surely rank as one the most high-pressure weeks in any industry. For one week, the great wine makers of France open their doors and allow the critics and tasters into the estates in order to taste their new vintage. A whole years worth of toil and effort, of baking outside in the sun, diligently watching your grapes get ripe enough, yet not too ripe. A whole year of hoping that there is enough rain, but not too much rain, hoping for a gentle breeze, crossing your fingers against an out-of-season frost. All this waiting, and then gentle harvesting, mulching and decanting into perfectly seasoned old barrels - knowing that every single thing has to be absolutely perfect, not allowing any imperfection to get into the process at any stage.

And for all that effort, you are rewarded with a week that will decide whether you make a million or a half-million, or whether in fact you will have a job next year. And on the imprecise science of the tastebuds of critics who have managed to become taste-makers. I can't imagine whether this would work in any other industry - if Apple made their new product, but it's success didn't rely on mass-market appeal, but on the whims of an uber-geek, would they realistically have been able to continue? What if that uber-geek simply didn't like listening to music while on the move: they would have been dead in the water with their launch of the ipod.