Judgment of Paris: The tasting that changed wine forever
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In a Parisian hotel 45 years ago, some of France’s biggest wine experts came together for a blind tasting.
The finest French wines were up against upstarts from California. 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.
Instead, the greatest underdog tale in wine history was about to unfold. 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.
He organized ‘the Judgment of Paris,’ a tasting event at which California vintages had their global breakthrough and began to compete on a world scale with the esteemed French.