Paris Judgment Shock: California Wines Defeat France

Nine French judges tasted California wine blind and scored it higher than their own grand crus. The world of fine wine has never recovered. On May 24, 1976, British wine merchant Steven Spurrier organized a tasting in Paris that pitted unknown California bottles against the finest French Bordeaux and Burgundy, and the Americans won both categories. Spurrier expected the French wines to dominate. He had assembled the tasting primarily as a publicity stunt for his Paris wine shop, inviting respected French wine critics and sommeliers to serve as judges. The California entries included a 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon and a 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay. The French side fielded Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Chateau Haut-Brion, and Meursault-Charmes, among others. The judges tasted blind, without knowing which wines were which. When the scores were tallied, Chateau Montelena had topped the white category and Stag's Leap had won the reds. Several French judges, upon learning they had rated California wines highest, attempted to take their scorecards back. George Taber of Time magazine, the only journalist present, refused to let the story disappear. The French wine establishment dismissed the result as a fluke. A rematch organized in 1986 using the same vintages produced the same outcome: California on top. The Paris tasting shattered the assumption that great wine could only come from European soil and opened global markets to producers in Chile, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. The $7 bottle of Stag's Leap that beat Mouton Rothschild launched a billion-dollar industry. Napa Valley land prices quintupled within a decade, and the old European monopoly on fine wine was finished.