Executive Reading: Judgment of Paris:California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine

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By George Taber
Scribner, September 2005, ISBN 0743247515

Reviewed by Margaret Teichert and Oleg Kaganovich

On May 24, 1976, English wine-shop owner Steven Spurrier arranged a blind taste test in Paris for an elite group of French wine experts. The competition was between several new California cabernets and chardonnays and their French counterparts, Burgundies and Bordeaux. Only one journalist responded to the press release, an American correspondent for “Time” magazine. “It seemed like a nonevent. Clearly France would win,” wrote George Taber, the journalist and now the author of “Judgment of Paris.”
     But the event also seemed to him “a perfectly wonderful way to spend an otherwise slow afternoon.” The judges shocked the world (and themselves) by choosing unknown California labels over France’s ?nest in both the red and white categories. Upon discovering their “mistake,” the judges were horri?ed, and Taber had his story: California defeats all of Gaul.
     So begins the story and the rise of premier California wine. The brief article Taber wrote about the event was published in June 1976, on page 58 in the magazine’s “Modern Living” section. It wasn’t even the lead story; but its impact, as it turns out, was profound. Within weeks, wine shops across the country, whose domestic sections were stocked mainly with Almaden and Gallo jug wines, were suddenly calling to order Chateau Montelena’s chardonnay and Stag’s Leap cabernet (the winners in their respective categories) and taking notice of the Napa Valley “terroir” as a whole. Even at a comparatively pricey $6 to $8 a bottle, they were having a hard time keeping their shelves stocked and were clamoring for more.
     Unlike the French, Taber writes, “the new California winemakers had no tradition or handed-down wisdom. They couldn’t pass along a wine heritage because they didn’t have one. As a result, they became experimenters, borrowing ideas where they found them and trying different ways of turning grape juice into wine.” For a bit of local ?avor (no pun intended), the book has fascinating anecdotes about UC Davis’ role in developing many new techniques and great wine-makers, as well as cameo appearances by Robert Mondavi and Sacramento’s Darrell Corti.
     In its most engaging parts, this book reads like the best kind of entrepreneur/business adventure story. Unlike the many books devoted to California’s other famous valley, this is not a story about creating the next new thing; it’s about making an old thing new, surprising and better. It’s interesting to note that around the same time aspiring winemakers were experimenting with soils and sul?tes to create California’s world class wines, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were inventing the personal computer less than 100 miles away.
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