The Judgment of Paris, This Time at Home - New York Times

The Judgment of Paris, This Time at Home - New York Times: "It wasn't nearly as much fun in Paris in 1976, the scene of the most famous tasting gotcha of all time. Back then, nine French judges, including some of the top names in the French wine and food establishment, were given 20 wines to taste blind, 10 white and 10 red. Of the whites, all made from the chardonnay grape, five were Burgundy and five California. The reds, all cabernet sauvignon or cabernet blends, were likewise divided between Bordeaux and California.

The rest, yes, is history. As has been retold countless times, most recently in George M. Taber's engrossing book 'Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine' (Scribner, 2005), the judges were thoroughly deluded by their conviction that only French wines were capable of rapturous effect. California's reputation for wine, as far as they were concerned, was somewhere south of Sicily.

'Ah, back to France,' one judge famously sighed after tasting a Napa Valley chardonnay, while another, sniffing a Bâtard-Montrachet, declared: 'That is definitely California. It has no nose.'

When all was done, the consensus favorite wines were a 1973 chardonnay from Chateau Montelena and a 1973 cabernet sauvignon from Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, both in Napa Valley. Celebration among the Americans, consternation among the French, and for Mr. Taber, then a Time magazine reporter who was the only journalist to attend the tasting, a chance to record for posterity what might otherwise have been forgotten.

Whether, as Mr. Taber asserts, the '76 tasting revolutionized wine is highly debatable. The economic, cultural and technological forces that have shaped the globalization of the wine industry were inexorable, regardless of the results of this particular tasting.

But nobody can dispute that the 1976 tasting gave instant credibility to a nascent California wine industry at a moment when California was poised to take advantage of it. It also packed an important promotional punch for those California wineries that did well, like Stag's Leap and Montelena, and gave Mike Grgich, the winemaker at Montelena, the opportunity to form his own winery, Grgich Hills, in partnership with Austin Hills."