Judgment of Paris: The tasting that modified wine for good

(CNN) — In a Parisian resort 45 years in the past, some of France’s largest wine specialists came together for a blind tasting.

The best French wines were up versus upstarts from California. At the time, this did not even appear like a truthful contest — France produced the world’s best wines and Napa Valley was not but on the map — so the end result was considered to be apparent.

As an alternative, the greatest underdog tale in wine history was about to unfold. Californian wines scored significant with the judges and gained in both equally the crimson and white categories, beating famous chateaux and domaines from Bordeaux and Burgundy.

The only journalist in attendance, George M. Taber of Time magazine, afterwards wrote in his short article that “the unthinkable took place,” and in an allusion to Greek mythology termed the event “The Judgment of Paris,” and so it would without end be acknowledged.

“It was a total game changer,” suggests Mark Andrew, a wine professional and co-founder of wine journal Noble Rot, “and it catapulted California wine to the top rated of the good wine conversation.” Wine experienced gotten its watershed second.

A journey to California

UK wine expert Steven Spurrier, right, came up with idea for a blind tasting contest.

Uk wine qualified Steven Spurrier, appropriate, came up with concept for a blind tasting contest.

WATFORD/Mirrorpix/Getty Photos

The tasting was the brainchild of British wine merchant Steven Spurrier, who passed away in March 2021 aged 79. “He was a legend,” says Andrew, who had regarded Spurrier for 15 years. “He was an open-minded male who genuinely understood wine, based on its excellent and its intrinsic benefit rather than name.”

In the early 1970s, Spurrier owned a wine store in Paris and a wine faculty ideal upcoming to it, identified as L’Academie du Vin. Equally were being aimed largely at non-French speakers and had been positioned on the Correct Lender of the Seine river, the place most of the overseas financial institutions and companies have been.

Spurrier appreciated to showcase wines from nations other than France in the store and at the college — an act of true revolt in Paris — and imagined of a tasting as a way to market his business enterprise.

Patricia Gastaud-Gallagher, an American affiliate of Spurrier, visited California wineries in 1975 and was impressed with the growing high-quality of their choices. She recommended to search into such wines for the tasting and have it take position on the bicentennial of the 1776 American War of Independence. She also encouraged Spurrier to visit California himself, to pick a handful of deserving candidates.

And so, in early May perhaps 1976, Spurrier and his wife Bella took off for San Francisco for a wine tour. The tour was organized by Napa resident and connoisseur Joanne DePuy, who showed the Spurriers all-around. “Steven wished to go to the scaled-down, boutique wineries,” she tells CNN. “He experienced a pretty very good palate and he purchased the wines he favored, at entire price.”

Bottles on a aircraft

The American wines were brought across with a group of 30 Californian winemakers.

The American wines had been brought throughout with a group of 30 Californian winemakers.

Harold Dorwin/Nationwide Museum of American Background/Smithsonian Establishment Archives

DePuy played a vital part in environment up the tasting, because Spurrier realized that carrying two dozen bottles of wine with him on a airplane would be difficult, and there was a a risk of possessing them held at customs. As a substitute, he requested DePuy to take the wine to Paris, considering that she experienced a tour of French vineyards lined up for mid-May, with 30 Californian winemakers traveling with her. The bottles could be transported as personal allowance.

“1 bottle broke,” she remembers. “Steven arrived to satisfy me in his customary white accommodate. We had been there waiting for my baggage, and for the cases of wine. I smelled it before I noticed it — just one of the scenarios had pink on the outdoors and I explained, ‘Oh, my.’ But Steven was quite sort. He mentioned, ‘That’s all appropriate, not a issue.’ He had at the very least two bottles of each individual wine.”

The tasting, now 6 months in the creating, was scheduled for Might 24, 1976 at the Intercontinental Hotel, not far from Spurrier’s store and school. The 9 judges, all French, integrated Odette Khan, editor of a prestigious wine magazine, and Aubert de Villaine, the director of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, a Burgundy estate that can make some of the world’s best, and most expensive, wines.

The fateful working day

Bottles from Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, then largely uknown in Europe, were part of the tasting.

Bottles from Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, then largely uknown in Europe, had been section of the tasting.

Jacqueline Romano/Getty Photographs for SOBEWFF®

Spurrier had no intention to trigger a stir or to humiliate his French judges. He wished minor extra than to make recognition for Californian wines and crank out publicity for his university. But he did come up with a way of building issues extra fascinating: he picked the 4 ideal white wines from Burgundy and the 4 best pink Bordeaux blends from his cellar to go in opposition to the American wines, and covered up all the labels.

“It was only fairly substantially at the final moment that Steven resolved to transform the testing from an open up a single to a blind one. Blind tastings are popular now, but at the time, it was a extremely ground breaking way to assess and distinction wines,” states Andrew.

Among the the French wines Spurrier picked were being Batard-Montrachet, Chateau Mouton-Rothschild and Chateau Haut-Brion — the elite of fantastic wine. The Californian offerings, 12 in overall, incorporated Ridge Vineyards, Freemark Abbey, Spring Mountain, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars and Chateau Montelena — all of which have been largely unknown in Europe.

The journalist George M. Taber was presented a card with the names of the wines that had been staying served, so he knew specifically what the judges were being tasting. He quickly realized factors were acquiring intriguing when a single of the judges tasted a white wine and proclaimed, “This is undoubtedly California. It has no nose,” when he was actually tasting the Batard-Montrachet, a Burgundy Chardonnay that is typically classified as 1 of the world’s greatest white wines.

The unthinkable was in truth occurring.

When Spurrier tallied the scores, it turned out that California had dominated the white wine group, with a 1973 Chardonnay from Chateau Montelena as the winner, and a few American wines in the top 5. In the crimson classification, a 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon from Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars arrived out on leading, narrowly edging out a 1970 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild from Bordeaux.

It was a David vs . Goliath result, with wines that had been much less expensive and youthful unexpectedly receiving rated bigger. The Chateau Montelena retailed at the time for about $6.50 for every bottle, a smaller fraction of the price of its French rivals Stag’s Leap experienced been established just 6 yrs before, in 1970, whereas winemaking at Chateau Mouton-Rothschild experienced been likely on for three generations. Both of those winners hailed from Napa Valley, which would go on to grow to be a single of the world’s leading wine regions.

The French judges have been far from amazed with the outcomes. Odette Khan unsuccessfully demanded her scorecard back again, according to Taber, so that the world would not know how she scored the wines, while Aubert de Villaine later described the event as “a kick in the rear for French wine.”

Youngsters from the sticks

paris judgment 2

The outcome of the tasting was witnessed as a David compared to Goliath result.

Courtesy Bella Spurrier

Joanne DePuy remembers the instant she read the news. She was also in France, tasting wine with Californian winemakers. In her team had been Jim and Laura Barrett, the homeowners of Chateau Montelena.

“We were at a vineyard in Bordeaux, sitting down down for lunch, when Jim Barrett was identified as on the telephone,” she recollects. “I assumed absolutely it have to have been one particular of his youngsters, simply because no one particular understood where we were. But after he took the call, Jim arrived up to me and whispered, ‘Our wine received in Paris.'”

The caller was, in point, George M. Taber, seeking for a quotation from Barrett for his report. That quote is now enshrined in the lore of the Judgment of Paris: “Not negative for youngsters from the sticks,” Barrett said, employing an American colloquialism for a distant or rural spot.

DePuy was desperate to share the news with the other people in the group, but because they have been sitting down with about 50 French wine retailers, she stated absolutely nothing alternatively. “Soon after lunch, we received on the bus and went down a very long, treelined lane — which I can continue to see in my intellect. We turned the corner and everyone begun screaming and yelling and hugging. It was amazing,” she says.

A seismic instant

Winemaker Jim Barrett described the victory as: "Not bad for kids from the sticks."

Winemaker Jim Barrett described the victory as: “Not undesirable for young ones from the sticks.”

Countrywide Museum of American Background/Smithsonian Institution Archives

The tasting modified historical past for wines of the New Entire world, coming from outdoors of standard wine areas such as France, Italy and Spain.

“In 1976, California wine was a little one, in world wide conditions and undoubtedly compared to the great wines of Europe, and the wines of Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Chile have been conceptually a really, extremely new thing for the European drinker,” says Andrew.

The tasting was a seismic instant in the modern-day historical past of wine, in accordance to Andrew, mainly because it shown that not only had been New Planet wines value paying awareness to, but that a lot of of the best palates in France — in a blind tasting state of affairs — actually most popular them.

“We continue to see these days that the cabinets of independent wine retailers and the wine lists of terrific restaurants are full of Californian, Australian and South African wines, and we’re entitled to question the question — would that have took place as quickly and as substantially as it did, ended up it not for Steven and the tasting that he place on?”

The Judgment of Paris has been replicated several situations after 1976, some of these by Spurrier himself, and with remarkably related success.

In France, the tasting lifted more than a few eyebrows and some thoughts about the procedure and the wine choice, with most of the Bordeaux producers claiming that their wines had been also young to be at their finest.

Its significance, having said that, stands unblemished.

Bottles of Chateau Montelena and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars like those that received the contest are now section of the collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Record. And a 2008 film, “Bottle Shock,” tells a intensely fictionalized edition of the tale, with Alan Rickman as Steve Spurrier.

Spurrier’s spouse Bella, who took the only present images of the function, tells CNN that the tasting had a substantial effect on the lifestyle of her late husband. “He was happy of it, but under no circumstances imagined at the time the effect it would have. His intention was merely to introduce wines that he believed have been excellent and well produced to a broader viewers,” she claims.

“Each individual wine had a story, in accordance to him, and this is what he found out in California. To the world’s wonderful shock at the time.”