| Paris Wine Tasting Of 1976 |
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With only one exception ( Claude Dubois-Millor ), the jury of nine tasters consisted of the ''crème de la crème'' of France's wine tasting experts. The tasting was done blind, so that none of the Judge s knew 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 Montalena, by winemaker Mike Grgich . Third and fourth place also went to California Chardonnays. The red wines were then tasted. When the results were unveiled a California wine (a Cabernert Sauvignon from Warren Winiarski at Stag's Leap Wine Cellars ) had again won top honors. "The wine that one judge said bespoke 'the magnificence of France' turned out to be a Napa Cabernet." The experts clearly couldn't distinguish California from French wines. "'That is definitely a California. It has no nose,' said another judge - after downing a Batard-Montrachet '73." 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 of 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?" It was sarcastic, described the results as "laughable," and said they "cannot be taken seriously." Six months after the tasting ''Le Monde'' wrote condescendingly and dismissively about the event. The '' New York Times '' reported that several earlier tastings had occurred in the U.S., with American Chardonnays beating 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 repeatedly, although no such comparison has ever again been made in France. The Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 had a revolutionary impact on expanding the production and prestige of wine in the New World. THE RESULTS White wines
Red wines
SEE ALSO Other wine competitions In all of these wine competitions, as in the Paris event, (1) all tasting was done blind and (2) the results were listed in rank order from highest to lowest. There were no multiple winners except in the case of multiple categories (for example one red wine winner and one white wine winner).
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