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PARIS WINE TASTING - 1976

Until 1976, France was generally regarded as having an unchallenged reputation as the foremost producer of the world's best wines . In that year a wine merchant in Paris , Steven Spurrier , organized a prestigious wine tasting in Paris, now known as the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 or the Judgement of Paris (a pun referring to a mythical contest ). Spurrier sold only French wines and later said "I thought I had it rigged for the French wines to win."

The jury of nine tasters in the wine competition included eight of France's top wine tasting experts. Blind tasting was performed so that none of the judges knew the identity of what was being tasted.

First to be tasted were white wines. The comparison was with Chardonnay - matching the very best French Chardonnays ( Burgundy ) against California Chardonnays. The winner was a California Chardonnay from Chateau Montelena , by winemaker Mike Grgich . Third and fourth place also went to California Chardonnays. All nine judges awarded their top scores to either Chalone Winery or Chateau Montelena, both of California.

The red wines were then tasted choosing a Cabernet Sauvignon from California's Stag's Leap Wine Cellars produced by winemaker Warren Winiarski for the top wine. "The wine that one judge said bespoke 'the magnificence of France' turned out to be a Napa Cabernet." Similarly, "'That is definitely a California. It has no nose,' said another judge - after downing a Batard-Montrachet '73." The comments and results of the tasting indicated that the judges could not distinguish California from French wines.

Three of the four Bordeaux wines in the competition were from the 1970 vintage, identified by the Conseil Interprofessionel du Vin de Bordeaux as among the four best vintages in the past 45 years or more. The fourth Bordeaux was a 1971, described by the Conseil as "very good" [1] .

The Bordeaux Wine Office rates the 1970 vintage for

  • Pessac (Chateau Haut-Brion) as the best between 1966 and 1978 [2] ,
  • Pauillac (Chateau Mouton Rothschild) as the best vintage between 1961 and 1982 (tie with 1975) [3] ,
  • Saint Estephe (Chateau Montrose) as the best vintage between 1961 and 1982 [4] , and the 1971 vintage for
  • Saint-Julien (Chateau Leoville Las Cases) as good.

"When the results were tallied and announced, several judges behaved badly, refusing to give up their notes, and one even tried to change his numbers before Spurrier whipped away the scorecards." (McCoy)

One of the judges, Odette Kahn , tried to get her ballot back at the close of the event. Spurrier declined to provide it after which she refused to speak to him, except to charge that he had falsified the results of the tasting. One of the winning winemakers, Warren Winiarski , received letters from people in the French wine business telling him that the results were a fluke. In essence, their letters argued that "'everyone knows' French wines are better than California wines 'in principle' and always will be." As recently as 2005, some of the judges refused to discuss the tasting, saying that to do so would be "too painful."

Although Spurrier had invited many reporters, the only reporter to attend was one from Time magazine, who promptly revealed the results to the world. Leaders of the French wine industry then banned Spurrier from the nation's prestige wine-tasting tour for a year, apparently as punishment for the damage his tasting had done to its former image of superiority.

The French press virtually ignored the story. After nearly three months, Le Figaro published an article titled "Did the war of the cru take place?", describing the results as "laughable," and said they "cannot be taken seriously." Six months after the tasting Le Monde wrote a similarly toned article.

The New York Times reported that several earlier tastings had occurred in the U.S., with American Chardonnays judged ahead of their French rivals. One such tasting occurred in New York just six months before the Paris Tasting, but "champions of the French wines argued that the tasters were Americans with possible bias toward American wines . What is more, they said, there was always the possibility that the Burgundies had been mistreated during the long trip from the (French) wineries.” The results of the Paris Wine Tasting in 1976 have subsequently been duplicated over time.

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Replications

In the San Francisco Wine Tasting of 1978 , ninety-nine evaluators blind tasted the same Cabernet Sauvignons earlier tasted in Paris. The top three ranks were won by California wines.

Some critics argued that French red wines would age better than the California reds. However, in blind competitions of the same wines ten years later ( French Culinary Institute Wine Tasting of 1986 and Wine Spectator Wine Tasting of 1986 ), California reds again placed ahead of their French counterparts.

A 30-year anniversary re-tasting on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean was organized by Steven Spurrier in 2006, ( The Wine Rematch of the Century ). As the Times of London reported "Despite the French tasters, many of whom had taken part in the original tasting, 'expecting the downfall' of the American vineyards, they had to admit that the harmony of the Californian cabernets had beaten them again. Judges on both continents gave top honours to a 1971 Ridge Monte Bello cabernet. Four Californian reds occupied the next placings before the highest-ranked Bordeaux, a 1970 Château Mouton-Rothschild , came in at sixth" [5] in the field of ten.

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Impact on Wine

The Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 had a revolutionary impact on expanding the production and prestige of wine in the New World. It also "gave the French a valuable incentive to review traditions that were sometimes more accumulations of habit and expediency, and to reexamine convictions that were little more than myths taken on trust." The result has been the improvement of wine around the world to the benefit of consumers.

Source: From Wikipedia, October 2006