Judgement of Paris - Round 2

This week’s Saturday tasting continues our commemoration of the May 1976 Judgment of Paris, the blind tasting where nine French judges chose California wines over French wines in a blind tasting. Last week we sampled Cabernet Sauvignon. This week, we’ll be following up with Chardonnay. 
 
Steve Spurrier, the British wine merchant who organized the event, initially planned to showcase the California wines alongside their French counterparts in an open tasting, not a blind one. Blind tastings were fairly new at the time. However, Spurrier worried that the French judges would damn the American wines with faint but dismissive praise — c’est pas mal! — so he changed it to a blind tasting at the last minute. 
 
Spurrier invited a number of journalists, but only one attended, George Taber of Time Magazine. Other reporters didn’t see any news value in watching French wines trounce unknown American wines. 
 
Taber had an advantage over the French judges because he knew the wines they were drinking. He witnessed Raymond Oliver, chef and owner of one of Paris’ greatest restaurants, Le Grand Vefour, taste one white wine and say, “Ah, back to France!” when he was tasting a Napa Valley Chardonnay. Another judge, tasting the famous White Burgundy, Barard-Montrachet, said, “this is definitely California – it has no nose.” 
 
Taber realized he had quite the scoop. In the end, the Chardonnays from California not only took the top prize overall but captured three of the five top spots in the white wine category. 
 
The title, “Judgment of Paris” was coined by George Taber, which he used as the headline of his Time Magazine story. The reference was to an ancient Greek myth involving a beauty contest (Paris, prince of Troy, had to choose between three goddesses) that led to the Trojan War. 
 
While the blind tasting version of Judgment of Paris didn’t start a war, its unexpected outcome did have world-changing consequences, at least in the wine world. Seeing world famous French wines fall to lesser-known California wines sparked the imagination of winemakers around the globe. As a result, vineyards and wineries began springing up not just in California, but in Washington and Oregon, and not only in the US, but in Argentina, Chile, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. 
 
The idea of New World wines was born, and we’re all better off as a result. 
 
The two winning California wines were put in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Museum.