Wine myths
The Judgement of Paris proved California makes better wine than France
“In 1976 California beat France in a blind tasting, proving the New World had overtaken the Old.”
Two California wines placed first in a tasting of twenty by eleven judges. That is a real and significant result; it is not a general finding about two countries.
The full answer
What happened is not in dispute. At a blind tasting in Paris in May 1976, organised by the British merchant Steven Spurrier, a 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay and a 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet placed first in their categories against Burgundy and Bordeaux, judged by a predominantly French panel.
The limits are equally clear. Ten wines in each flight, one panel, one afternoon, and scores whose statistical spread was later shown to be too tight to separate the wines with confidence. Several judges’ individual rankings were internally inconsistent.
The Bordeaux wines were also young. The 1970 and 1971 clarets were three to six years old and built to age, and were being judged against Californian wines already showing well.
Its actual significance is commercial and psychological rather than evaluative. It demonstrated that Californian wine could stand comparison at all, at a moment when that was widely doubted, and it changed investment, export and self-perception across the New World.
Later re-tastings of the same reds in 1986 and 2006 again placed Californian wines highly, which strengthens the case that the wines were good and does nothing to establish the sweeping claim.
The result was real, the tasting was blind, and its consequences for the wine world were enormous.
A reading of the available evidence by people qualified to make it, where the evidence genuinely underdetermines the answer.
What would settle it: Evidence arriving that settles the question either way.
In the timeline
Sources
Sources consulted
- The Oxford Companion to Wine — Oxford University Press
- Napa Valley Vintners — Napa Valley Vintners