On This Day: Judgement of Paris catapults California wine industry, changes wine forever - May 24, 1976
(edited from article)
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Judgment of Paris: The tasting that changed wine forever
CNN
In a Parisian hotel 45 years ago, some of France’s biggest wine experts came together for a blind tasting.
The finest French wines were up against upstarts from California. At the time, this didn’t even seem like a fair contest – France made the world’s best wines and Napa Valley was not yet on the map – so the result was believed to be obvious.
Instead, the greatest underdog tale in wine history was about to unfold. Californian wines scored big with the judges and won in both the red and white categories, beating legendary chateaux and domaines from Bordeaux and Burgundy.
“It was a complete game changer,” says Mark Andrew, a wine expert and co-founder of wine magazine Noble Rot, “and it catapulted California wine to the top of the fine wine conversation.” Wine had gotten its watershed moment.
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https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/judgment-of-paris-wine-tasting-cmd/index.html
(edited from Wikipedia)
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Judgement of Paris
The Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, also known as the Judgment of Paris, was a wine competition organized in Paris on 24 May 1976 by Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant, and his colleague, Patricia Gallagher, in which French oenophiles participated in two blind tasting comparisons: one of top-quality Chardonnays and another of red wines (Bordeaux wines from France and Cabernet Sauvignon wines from California). A Napa County wine rated best in each category, which caused surprise as France was generally regarded as being the foremost producer of the world's best wines. By the early 1970s, the quality of some California wines was outstanding but few took notice as the market favored French brands. Spurrier sold predominately French wine and believed the California wines would not win.
The event's informal name "Judgment of Paris" is an allusion to the ancient Greek myth.
When the results were announced French judge Odette Kahn demanded her ballot back and later criticized the Paris tasting.
Method - [only French judges count]
Blind tasting was performed and the judges were asked to grade each wine out of 20 points. No specific grading framework was given, leaving the judges free to grade according to their own criteria.
Rankings of the wines preferred by individual judges were based on the grades they individually attributed.
An overall ranking of the wines preferred by the jury was also established in averaging the sum of each judge's individual grades (arithmetic mean). However, grades of Patricia Gallagher and Steven Spurrier were not taken into account, thus counting only grades of French judges.
30th anniversary - [California wins again]
A 30th anniversary re-tasting on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean was organized by Steven Spurrier in 2006. As The Times 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 honors 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."
The Tasting that Changed the Wine World: 'The Judgment of Paris' 30th Anniversary was conducted on 24 May 2006.
The pearl anniversary was held simultaneously at the museum Copia in Napa, California, and in London at Berry Bros. & Rudd, Britain's oldest wine merchant.
The panel of nine wine experts at Copia consisted of Dan Berger, Anthony Dias Blue, Stephen Brook, Wilfred Jaeger, Peter Marks MW, Paul Roberts MS, Andrea Immer Robinson MS, Jean-Michel Valette MW and Christian Vanneque, one of the original judges from the 1976 tasting.
The panel of nine experts at Berry Bros. & Rudd consisted of Michel Bettane, Michael Broadbent MW, Michel Dovaz, Hugh Johnson, Matthew Jukes, Jane MacQuitty, Jasper Morris MW, Jancis Robinson OBE MW and Brian St. Pierre.
The results showed that additional panels of experts again preferred the California wines over their French competitors.
Implications in the wine industry
Although Spurrier had invited many reporters to the original 1976 tasting, the only reporter to attend was George M. Taber from Time, who promptly revealed the results to the world. The horrified and enraged leaders of the French wine industry then banned Spurrier from the nation's prestigious wine-tasting tour for a year, apparently as punishment for the damage his tasting had done to its former image of superiority. The tasting was not covered by the French press, who almost 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, France's most prestigious magazine, reported the tasting where writer Lionel Raux wrote a similarly toned article titled, "Let's Not Exaggerate!"
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 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."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_(wine)
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