Wine warrior or wine wimp? The hour of reckoning arrived last week at the 25th annual Wine Experience. This three-day wine-soaked affair – hosted by a charitable arm of Wine Spectator magazine – is packed with wine tastings and seminars. Things kicked off with the epic Critics’ Choice Grand Tasting, where 258 wineries from a dozen countries were each pouring just one wine for more than 7,000 guests. To be included in this tasting, each wine must have scored 90 points or more on the Wine Spectator magazine’s 100-point rating scale. Some of the labels were iconic, like Chateaus Lafite Rothschild and Margaux. Others were outer-orbit stars, like Japan’s Mercian Katsunuma Winery and Lebanon’s Chateau Musar. And then there were the cult wines such as Screaming Eagle, the Napa Valley rarity that goes for around $1500 a bottle.

This gathering of overachievers was a potent lure to wine buffs, who paid $250 for the Grand Tasting or $1,750 for the full weekend of events. Who among us could hope to sample more than a smattering of these wines in a lifetime, let alone in a single evening? But the palate has its limits. Trying to taste more than a fraction of the wines that beckoned is like trying to win the Nathan’s hotdog eating contest. Normal humans aren’t equipped to do it.

My strategy for tasting wines started with hunger. From the buffet, I plated an oversized grilled sardine and began to taste white wines with it. First was the Leeuwin Estate “Art Series” Chardonnay 2001. For anyone who’s had one too many tiring fruit bombs from Australia, it was a revelation: light on its feet, yet emitting a brilliant beam of lemony fruit.

Next was Corton-Charlemagne 1998 from Bonneau du Martray, a mighty Burgundian name. Few dry white wines are just hitting their youthful stride at age 7, but this deep and full wine has.

An unfamiliar wine with its own brand of power was Movia’s Veliko Bianco 2000, evoking quince, pear, and the scent of autumn mums. It didn’t taste like any wine I knew, and no wonder – it’s from Slovenia.

Nearby was a Sicilian white wine, Planeta’s Cometa 2004, brimming with essence of tropical fruit underpinned by minerals. I ended my excursion through the whites back on hallowed turf with Salon Brut 1995, one of the oldest champagne brands. “This vintage was all apples and grapefruit when it was young,” Salon’s chairman, Didier Depond, said as he poured the pale golden bubbly. “Now it’s moved on to honeysuckle and hazelnuts.”

On to the reds, starting with Quintessa 2002, a Bordeaux style blend from the Napa Valley, balanced like its role model but more lusciously fruited. Then Chateau La Fleur-Petrus 2000 from Pomerol, so supple and elegant.

From Chile, which once offered few alternatives to bargain priced, merely pleasant wines, there was Montes Alpha M Santa Cruz 2000, a wine that pays homage to Bordeaux with its dense structure, yet has its own distinctive and mellow fruit profile, mingling black cherries and coffee. “Two years ago, when they rated this wine 94, it was a rather handsome teenager,” the winemaker and president, Aurelio Montes, said. “Now it’s turning into a serious and elegant grown-up.”

Tasting steadily, I began to feel good about my coverage of the wineries at hand. Then a fellow taster strongly advised checking out a few wineries I hadn’t noticed. “They’re downstairs in the other ballroom,” he said.

Oh yes, the other ballroom. It had slipped my mind that, with only 30 minutes to go until the closing bell, there was yet another level of exploration awaiting. Down I trekked to this uncharted acre of additional pickings.

One that stood out was Pio Cesare’s Barolo Ornato 2000. It had a pale red hue. But there was nothing pale about its medley of woodsy mushroom and autumnal meadow flower notes, perked by a tarry accent. I can’t think of any other red wine that is as textured as a great Barolo, and this was one. The white equivalent, for me, had been upstairs: the Sauternes Chateau Rieussec 1998 – honeyed, orange-inflected, and incredibly vicious as it did a slow dance on my taste buds.

At 10 o’clock, as guests crowded the descending elevators at the end of that first evening of the Grand Tasting (repeated the next evening), I noticed that, after three and a half hours of intensive tasting, the mood was good-natured and nobody seemed to be unsteady. Chalk it up to really good wine and frequently emptied spittoons at every tasting station.

By the end of the Wine Experience, 26,000 bottles of wine had been consumed (almost four to a guest!) and a mind-numbing 64,000 glasses were used, washed, and reused.

The editor and publisher of Wine Spectator, Marvin Shanken, first hosted a far smaller Wine Experience 24 years ago in San Francisco. To date, more than $5 million in proceeds from the Wine Experience has gone to the Wine Spectator Scholarship Foundation. It benefits wine and food educational institutions, including a repository of oral histories of California wine pioneers at the University of California at Berkley. More than 400 students have received stipends from the foundation.

Was there a high point for Mr. Shanken at this year’s Wine Experience? “It was the attendance of Robert Mondavi at the final dinner,” he answered. “The man is 92 years old, and he is frail. The cross-country trip was a sacrifice for him. A great sacrifice. But he’s never missed the event. He got an extended standing ovation.”

Now that’s a wine warrior.