The year a California chardonnay corked the French and changed the world

 

The story of a wine tasting that began as a publicity stunt and ended up revolutionizing the world of wine.

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History tells us that all roads used to lead to Rome. In the same fashion, the single road lighting up the magic path to the world of wines led to France. Until 1976.

 

It all began with a British businessman who wanted to promote the new Californian vintages he offered in his wine store in Paris, which was initially ridiculed by the media. So he staged a blind wine testing between Californian and French Chardonnay. The anticipation of its failure kept the pompous wine critiques at home. Except one. One single journalist showed up to the gathering – Jack Tabber of Time Magazine. Nobody else was interested in this no show.
Everyone already knew the French would decant any competition in the same natural way the earth rotates around the sun.

 

As the sole journalist present during the tasting, Taber had access to the list of the order the wines were served during the tasting. The judges did not, but he watched them swirl and spit. At one point, Taber recalls Raymond Oliver, a chef and owner of Le Grand Véfour, one of Paris’ great restaurants — sampled a white. “And then he smelled it, then he tasted it and he held it up again, [and] he said, “Ah, back to France!” Taber recalls.

Except it was a chardonnay from the Napa Valley. The judge didn’t know that. “But I knew,” Taber says. And once he realized what was happening, Taber says, “I thought, hey, maybe I got a story here.” Decades later, he penned The Judgment of Paris, an account of that day and its aftermath. Little did he suspect he was witnessing history in the making.

 

Having no competition to relate the story, the Time Magazine’s writer ended up getting the biggest story of his career.

The controversial gathering invited a panel of nine French wine experts to sample ten white wines (six California Chardonnay and four Burgundies) and ten reds (six California Cabernets and four Bordeaux).
To everyone’s dismay, a pair of Napa Valley vintages took the winner’s crown. Chateau Montelena and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. From that point on, the nightmare began. French winemakers cried foul and the judges were branded traitors and pressured to resign from all positions they held. As for the organizer, he was blamed for capsizing France’s world supremacy of wine having orchestrated the country’s humiliation clearly at the hands of the American diabolical wineries.

Though no crimes was truly committed, that anonymous summer day of 1976 will always be known as the Judgement Day of Paris.

 

Bottles of the triumphant wines of 1976 are held in the Smithsonian collections at the National Museum of American History

 

Abiding by their innate culture of denial, the French blamed the poor weather to justify the embarrassment, and then demanded a rematch. The following year, The cooperating Californians returned to the city of lights, bottles in hand, for another brainstorming match to prove the weather was not the culprit. And won again. And again…

 

The aftermath of the wine tasting in Paris that year did not just light up Napa Valley to the rest of the world. The infamous wine testing of Paris opened a crack for other grapes to squeeze in the door corking a new series of young vintages from across the world that would make a permanent mark in the industry of the beverage: New Zealand, Australia, Chile, South Africa…

1976 is the year the world of wine changed forever.

For a 2-minute audio transcript of the tasting, listen to Maria Godoy’s transcript of NPR’s All Things Considered  Judgment of Paris