'The Judgement of Paris' Tasting 1976

The Judgement of Paris, the 1976 tasting that revolusionised the wine trade

During the 1970s in Paris Steven Spurrier ran a successful wine merchants and wine school called L'Académie du Vin, with the help of his American colleague Patricia Gallagher.  It is during this time that Steven challenged the reputation of French wines against California wines - after Californian winemakers invited by Patricia, brought over wine from the best vineyards in Napa Valley.  During the 1970s French wines made up the majority of the global wine trade, in fact at the time this is all Steven sold in his shop. Steven tasted some outstanding Chardonnays and Cabernet Sauvignons from Napa Valley and decided to show his esteemed French colleagues, who believed only French winemakers could make outstanding wines, how good the California wines were.  On 24th May 1976 he held a competition that became famously known as ‘The Judgement of Paris’ and invited 9 of the best wine experts in Paris to blind taste the best Napa wines alongside wines from famous chateaus like the Rothchild Estate. The results were completely unexpected– the California wines scored the highest points,  the competition results went viral, and unintentionally Steven showed the world that exceptional wines could be made outside of France and beyond Europe! It was a tasting that revolutionised the global wine trade and shocked the French….in fact Steven was challenged by his French colleagues to do a re-run on the competition 30 years later in 2006 with the same wines because the French were convinced their wines would age better.  They were proved wrong again - the Cabernet Sauvignon from Stag's Leap vineyard scored the highest points. Watch the film ‘Bottle Shock’ for a dramatised version of the story, with Alan Rickman who plays Steven. It is thanks to Steven's ability to challenge the status quo and take risks that wines of the New World gradually became accessible in shops and restaurants across Europe  - a choice we take for granted today!

Let's take ourselves back to the event in Steven's own words as published on L'Académie du Vin's website...

Les Caves de la Madeleine

In autumn 1970, after a couple of years in Provence, my wife Bella and I decided to move to Paris where I said I would get back into the wine trade. Of course Paris did not have the same structured wine trade as London, but walking through a small mews-like street just off the Place de la Madeleine to have lunch with a lawyer friend we passed a small wine shop called Les Caves de la Madeleine. Pausing, I told my friend that that was exactly the sort of shop I could make a go of and he dragged me inside only to reveal, after a conversation in his fluent French with the lady owner, that it was in fact for sale.

The price was agreed, but both sides thought a waiting period of six months would allow us to be certain of the deal, so I began working for Madame Fougeres as a cellar rat and delivery boy and on April 1st 1971 the keys were handed over to me. My first action was to place a classified ad in the Herald Tribune (“The Trib”) which was the ex-pats daily newspaper with the line “Your wine merchant speaks English, call Steven Spurrier.”

L’Academie du Vin

The Place de la Madeleine on the smart Right Bank of the city, was the true centre of Paris and at that time English speaking banks, law firms and the like were mostly in the area. I very quickly acquired a clientele who not only wanted to buy wine, but wanted to know more about it, so when, eighteen months later, the premises next door became available, I took them over and opened L’Academie du Vin, the very first private wine school in France. Since I was very busy with the shop this needed a manager. Patricia Gallagher, a young American lady who worked at The Trib, applied for the job and was taken on right away. This was early 1973 and the courses we created were popular as was the shop and, for non-French speakers, especially visitors, we were really the only game in town.

Californian wine and the seed of an idea

Thus it was that the occasional producer of Californian wine came to show their wines to us, and American wine writers, Robert Finigan of San Francisco and Alexis Bespaloff of New York, dropped by with bottles that we enjoyed over lunch. Patricia, who was from the East Coast, might have tasted such wines before but I certainly had not. We were both impressed and enthusiastic and since at L’Academie du Vin we had been breaking Parisian wine rules by putting on tastings of wines from countries other than France, Patricia suggested we present a range of these at some point. Fired up, Patricia decided to spend some of her vacation time in California and got in touch with Robert Finigan who offered to take her round a few wineries. She returned more impressed than ever, particularly by the Chardonnay whites and the Cabernet Sauvignon reds, and in autumn 1975 we put together plans to present a selection of these wines to a handful of the best and most influential wine people in France.

L’Academie du Vin was both known to such people and very well-respected as we were now teaching as many courses in French as in English, including the Parisian Sommeliers, so it was not difficult for us to receive acceptances from our first choice of nine exceptional tasters, including the owners of Le Grand Vefour and Le Taillevent, Paris’s two best 3 Michelin rosette restaurants. We decided that such an event needed prestigious premises and through a client were offered a fine space at the Intercontinental Hotel, a short walk from L’Academie du Vin. Finally, since all the tasters were French and might not have been aware that California even produced wine, I told Patricia that we needed a “peg” to hang this on. She immediately suggested that 1976 was the bicentennial of the 1776 American War of Independence, the French under General Lafayette joining in to fight the British, and although this was not a high point in my country’s history, I willingly agreed.

Selecting the wines for The Judgement of Paris

A date was set for late May and Bella and I flew into San Francisco over the Easter holidays to make the final selection. Patricia had made a shortlist and thanks to Robert Finigan and advice from John Avery MW, whose company in Bristol was already importing some of the best labels, we criss-crossed the wine regions to come up with a selection of six Chardonnays and six Cabernet Sauvignons. After the tasting I was asked why there were none of the big, established names like Mondavi and Beaulieu Vineyard participating in the Judgement of Paris, replying that I preferred the much smaller and often recently created wineries, where the owners themselves were totally involved.

Customs Conundrum

Two bottles of each of these wines, purchased by me from the cellar door, were now in our hotel bedroom and the question was: how to get them to Paris? My experience in 1972 in trying to clear English wine through airport customs for the visit of the Queen to Paris had shown me that the chances of my being able to clear 24 bottles of “foreign” wine were slim and that even if possible, French bureaucracy would risk holding the wines well past the planned date for the tasting. Fortunately (and there was a huge amount of luck around the Paris Tasting from start to finish) I had met at one of the wineries a lady named Joanne Dickinson who had put together a group of 30 winery owners for a comprehensive tour of the main vineyards in France. They were to leave in mid-May and agreed to bring in the wines as their personal allowance of one bottle per head. I met Joanne and her group at Charles de Gaulle airport and was overjoyed to see the two cartons on the luggage carousel.

Patricia and I had prepared a tasting and buffet lunch for the group and then unpacked the bottles, one of which had been broken in transit, but there was a back-up. With about a week to go before the actual day – the tasters had confirmed their attendance and the Intercontinental Hotel the allotted space – I began to be concerned as to the outcome of what had been six months in the planning. Our aim was simple: to get recognition from this influential group as to the high quality of wines from California.

However, of the nine, I was sure that only one – Aubert de Villaine, co-owner of Burgundy’s most famous vineyard the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti – would have ever tasted such wines before, due to his having married a girl from San Francisco. The others, knowing that California was on the west coast of America a little north of Mexico, would have correctly assumed that the wines came from a warm climate and might have “damned them with faint praise”. We were after more than the French phrase “c’est vraiement pas mal”/it’s really not bad.

My solution was to select the four best white Burgundies from my shop and the four best Cabernet Sauvignon dominated red Bordeaux and put these in, thus creating a comparative tasting and to make this more interesting, to have the wines served “blind”, with their labels covered up.

Patricia pointed out that this was not what our guests were coming for and I said I would put it to them on the day and if they were not interested in the comparison, we would just taste the Californian wines.

The day itself

May 24th rolled around and assuming our guests would accept, I had written the names of each of the ten white and ten red wines on a bit of paper, folded them up and placed them in a hat, Patricia drawing them out to create the order of tasting. Once everyone was seated, I unveiled my idea to make it a blind tasting, to see how the “Californian Cousins” would stand up to the best from France, and the guests all agreed that it was an excellent idea.

The tasting progressed, wine by wine, first whites then reds, the tasters ranking the wines on the 20 point scale, their marks being added and divided by nine to obtain the result, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Results of the Judgement of Paris

CHARDONNAY WHITES.
Chateau Montelena 1973 (Ca).
Meursault-Charmes 1973 (Fr).
Chalone Vineyard 1974 (Ca).
Spring Mountain 1973 (Ca).
Beaune Clos des Mouches 1973 (Fr).
Freemark Abbey 1972 (Ca).
Bâtard-Montrachet 1973 (Fr).
Puligny-Montrachet Les Pucelles 1972 (Fr).
Veedercrest 1972 (Ca).
David Bruce 1973 (Ca).

Given the quality (and price) of the French wines I would have been happy to see Californian with say a 3rd and a 5th, but they got 1st, 3rd and 4th. Six of the tasters voted Montelena top and three voted for Chalone (my choice).

CABERNET SAUVIGNON REDS.
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 1973 (Ca).
Ch. Mouton-Rothschild 1970 (Fr).
Ch. Haut-Brion 1970 (Fr).
Ch. Montrose 1970 (Fr).
Ridge Montebello 1971 (Ca).
Ch. Leoville-Las Cases 1971 (Fr).
Mayacamus 1971 (Ca).
Clos du Val 1972 (Ca).
Heitz Martha’s Vineyard 1970 (Ca).
Freemark Abbey 1969 (Ca).

This was a much tighter contest with Stag’s Leap winning by just 127.5 points over Mouton-Rothschild’s 126, but there were still two Californian wines in the top five. The result was particularly shocking for the Bordeaux chateaux owners, whose reply was that their wines had been tasted far too young and needed at least 10 years to come into their own.

A decade on and a re-match

So, in 1986 I re-held the tasting of the same red wines in New York with once again a panel of nine expert palates. That time the top five were:

Clos du Val 1972 (Ca).
Ridge Montebello 1971 (Ca).
Ch. Montrose 1970 (Fr).
Ch. Leoville-Las Cases 1971 (Fr).
Ch. Mouton-Rothschild 1970 (Fr).

California on top 30 years on

I felt I had rebutted the Bordeaux point of view and saw no reason to hold it again 20 years on and it was only after a good deal of arm-twisting from Jacob Lord Rothschild in the UK and Robert Mondavi in California that I prepared, with the help of Patricia Gallagher, a “last hurrah” on May 24th 2006, simultaneously at 10am in Napa and 6pm in London, with once again nine tasters, one of the original 1976 guests being present at each, and once the rankings of the 18 judges were collated, the Californian Cabernets took the top five places:

Ridge Monte Bello 1971.
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 1973.
Heitz Martha’s Vineyard 1970.
Mayacamas 1971.
Clos du Val 1972.

So, this just about wrapped up the ‘Judgement of Paris’, as George Taber had entitled his article a couple of weeks after the May 1976 event in Time Magazine, thus telling it to the world.