“He had a very good palate and he bought the wines he liked, at full price.” “Steven wanted to go to the smaller, boutique wineries,” she tells CNN. The tour was arranged by Napa resident and connoisseur Joanne DePuy, who showed the Spurriers around. She also encouraged Spurrier to visit California himself, to pick a few worthy candidates.Īnd so, in early May 1976, Spurrier and his wife Bella took off for San Francisco for a wine tour. She suggested to look into such wines for the tasting and have it take place on the bicentennial of the 1776 American War of Independence. Patricia Gastaud-Gallagher, an American associate of Spurrier, visited California wineries in 1975 and was impressed with the rising quality of their offerings. Spurrier liked to showcase wines from countries other than France in the shop and at the school – an act of true rebellion in Paris – and thought of a tasting as a way to promote his business. “It was a complete game changer,” says Mark Andrew, a wine expert and co-founder of wine magazine Noble Rot, “and it catapulted California wine to the top of the fine wine conversation.” Wine had gotten its watershed moment.įrench bakers want UNESCO designation for baguettes Taber of Time magazine, later wrote in his article that “the unthinkable happened,” and in an allusion to Greek mythology called the event “The Judgment of Paris,” and thus it would forever be known. The only journalist in attendance, George M. Californian wines scored big with the judges and won in both the red and white categories, beating legendary chateaux and domaines from Bordeaux and Burgundy. Instead, the greatest underdog tale in wine history was about to unfold. At the time, this didn’t even seem like a fair contest – France made the world’s best wines and Napa Valley was not yet on the map – so the result was believed to be obvious. The finest French wines were up against upstarts from California. In a Parisian hotel 45 years ago, some of France’s biggest wine experts came together for a blind tasting.
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