This weekend sees the 50th anniversary of one of the most famous moments in wine history. It was what one American winemaker, Warren Winiarski, calls a Copernican moment, when the universe of wine shifted and France was usurped by America. Or so it seemed at the time. I am talking, of course, about the Judgment of Paris.
This was a blind tasting put on in the French capital by English wine merchant Steven Spurrier. He lined up the crème de la crème of the French wine industry as judges. The first round was California Chardonnay versus white Burgundy. The winner was Château Montelena which despite its French-sounding name came from Napa Valley. Ça alors!
Next up was California Cabernet versus the best of Bordeaux and the winner by a nose was another Napa Valley wine, Stag’s Leap Cabernet, made by a certain Warren Winiarski. The might of France was beaten by a man named Warren.
It was a bitter blow to French pride which had taken some hard knocks in the 20th century. First the Great War followed by defeat in the Second World War. Peace in Europe was guaranteed by an upstart colony – while France, like Britain, had lost all of hers apart from a few territories in the Caribbean.
Even worse was losing the cultural supremacy that the country had enjoyed since the reign of Louis XIV. The centre of the art world was no longer Paris, it was New York. French teenagers were listening to le rock n’ roll. The world watched Hollywood films. French was no longer the international lingua franca, it was English.
But at least France could say that it was still dominant where it mattered: in the pleasures of the table. In the 1970s France was still the undisputed gastronomic capital of the world. If you wanted to learn how to cook or make wine then you hired a Frenchman. But with the surprise result at the InterContinental Hotel in Paris, even that comfort blanket was snatched away. There was now no arena in which they were better than les Anglo-Saxons, apart from making love, naturellement.
What happened on that fateful day? One judge, Odette Kahn from the Revue du Vin de France, thought that the Americans had cheated: “it was a false test because California wines are trying to become too much like French wines.”
Others thought that it was unfair because French wines were designed to go with food not like obvious fruity American ones. British wine merchant Richard Ballantyne thinks the whole scoring system was flawed.
But the truth is that France had been caught napping behind the Maginot Line of its illustrious heritage. Bordeaux and Burgundy didn’t have any competition so why try harder? In contrast, California was catching up fast with ambitious winemakers who were raised on the great vintages of France. Imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery.
America looked poised to become the top nation in wine just as it had in military might and cultural influence. But it never happened. One of the judges, Aubert de Villaine from Domaine Romanée Conti, described the result as “un coup dans la derrière pour les vins français”.
Bordeaux especially would go through a golden age in the 1980s with a run of splendid vintages and soaring prices thanks to the interests of American critics like Robert Parker. Burgundy is now the most sought-after wine in the world.
For the 30th anniversary in 2006, Spurrier reran the tasting with new vintages and “the Bordeaux wines simply wiped the floor with those from California”. He continues in his autobiography: “My view of the 1976/2006 tastings is that it showed that in the early 1970s the benchmark Bordeaux were resting on their laurels and by the late 1990s, so were the classic Californians.”
Other countries like Australia, Italy and Chile cashed in on the opening up of wine heralded by the Judgment. But California didn’t largely because once the affluent home market realised how good the wines were, there was very little for the rest of the world.
But this might be about to change as America now has a wine surplus. Affluent Americans are turning away from wine. For the first time California is having to think seriously about export. So watch out France, don’t get too comfortable, the battle of the wines isn’t over yet.
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Dining and Cooking