Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine

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This is an exceptional book. George Taber was the only journalist at the famous 1976 Paris tasting and the person best positioned to tell its story. The story, however, is a fairly simple and straightforward one. Man arranges tasting of French and California wines; California wines win; the French are aghast. This was a small event with huge repercussions. Hence, Taber spends the bulk of the book detailing the background which led to the event and the results that followed it. In doing so he gives a panoramic, if selective, account of current practices in the French and new world wine industries and--in the strongest sections of the book--tells the personal stories of the individuals whose lives were intertwined with the event. With the latter he is providing, in effect, a history of several of the key players in the Napa wine industry: Andre Tchelistcheff, Mike Grgich, Warren Winiarski (my all-time favorite academic), Robert Mondavi, et al.

Like all compelling stories this is a very personal one, the events all turning on individual experiences and individual decisions. Hence there is a beautiful 'reality' about it, a reality that continues today. When you visit some of these individuals' wineries you are still likely to see them there, behind their desks or in their cellars, doing their thing. They changed the world of wine and this is a crucial part of their story.

Centered on a small, poorly attended (only one journalist present) wine tasting event in 1976-the famous Paris tasting organized by the English bon vivant and Paris wine retailer/writer Steven Spurrier-George Taber tells the whole story first-hand (he was the journalist present!). In the process of giving all the details of the wines, the jurors, and the scores, the book actually covers the universe of contemporary wine issues, from the winemakers, both French and Californian, to the issues of wine economics and globalization.
Taber begins the story with fascinating mini-biographies of the winemakers and winery owners (such as Mike Grgich, Warren Winiarski, and Jim Barrett), discusses the trials and tribulations of making their first wines, outlines each of the competition wines (California and French) in interesting detail and context, then, after describing the competition itself, follows the discussion with the chronology of the press and public reaction from the U.S. and abroad (mostly French-they were pissed).
Positing the shattering of French wine hegemony by this `momentous' wine event, he then points the reader to the subsequent enabling of the `Globalisation of Wine', and in the remainder of the book, takes a number of diversions that relate to this hotly discussed topic, including a chapter on six recent International Wine Stars, and others that give a (relatively) non-judgemental perspective on contemporary wine trends, wine economics, wine styles, and more wine personalities.
Very enjoyable and well written, it's a must read for the wine enthusiast, and for anyone interested in a succinct summary of many (non-technical) contemporary wine issues.

This book should also be listed under business books --how to build a business. It could also be a case study about the danger of arrogance in business.

Regarding building a business---what I enjoyed most was the entrepreneurial story of early stage businesses working to create great products and fighting to get their products distributed, known to their market channels and taken seriously by consumers. Many smart business people do everything right and never make it because they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then they watch some dummy become a winner because of luck. Here the good guys also have a really big and unexpected bit of luck.
This story is not about a high-tech company that created the next new thing. This is about an agricultural product that's been made for thousands of years. This is about how people who really love something can make an old thing new, exciting and great. It is said that if you build a better mouse trap the world will beat a path to your door. That's bull. If the world doesn't know about your new, new thing only grass will grow in that path to your door. The 1976 Paris tasting alerted the world to the quality of California wines and showed the path to the producers' doors.
This book also tells how that tasting emboldened other regions of the world to invest in marketing their wines to the world. And the book mentions how Acker Merrall & Condit (full disclosure requires me to say it's my favorite NYC wine store) sold out of those California wines the day of Taber's Time Magazine story. In 1976 Acker was (and it still is) a store that devotes shelf space to unknown, but exceptional wine values. With this book's mention of Acker, as the early NYC retail distribution channel for California wines, a retailer has had its own bit of luck out of the story of the 1976 Paris tasting.

Regarding arrogance in business--the French do not want to face it, but just as Japan now makes better cars and offers better service than the once great US manufacturers, the rest of the world's wine producers are increasing sales of their wines while French wine sales are declining. A few of the great French wines will continue to demand crazy prices because of limited production, snobishness and the madness of crowds, but the French are not sharing in the enormous increase in the world's sale and consumption of wine. 1976 was the bicentennial of our US revolution against the UK. Perhaps it is France that now needs a revolution against arrogance, but that's probably too much to expect from the people that created the word chauvinism.

The actual Judgment of Paris - the blind tasting between California and French wines in Paris in 1976 - only occupies a few pages of this book. The first part is a fascinating story of the history of wine in California, and the history of how the wineries, and their wines, that were in the tasting came to be. The second part covers the fallout from the Judgment of Paris, and how it, in many ways, led to the global surge in production of fine wine.

The Judgment of Paris shook French winemakers out of their complacency, as they themselves said toward the end of the book. A subtext that perhaps even the author may not have noticed was that the leading California winemakers did the same thing for California wines. The victors were not from Northern California - the owner and winemaker from Stags Leap was from Chicago, and Chateau Montelena was acquired by two Angelenos who hired a Croatian winemaker. The wine business of Napa and Sonoma was stuck in complacency of its own, focusing on low-quality jug wine to the extent that grapes were even grown at all. It took outsiders from the Midwest and Southern California to kickstart the wine industry in Northern California into its present state.

If you are at all interested in wine, this is an interesting and very approachable book.

For Napa Valley wine lovers, 1976 is the turning point in the history of what is now considered to be one of the world's truly great wine producing regions. That's the year that two California wines beat two French wines in a blind tasting at a Parisian wine shop. When the news appeared on the pages of Time Magazine, it seemed to legitimize Napa wines in the eyes of many wine lovers.

The trouble with pointing at 1976 as a turning point in the history of Napa Valley wines -- and of California wines by extension -- is that the year is really just a single point on a long timeline. Like 476 (the date generally accepted to mark the fall of the Roman Empire), 1476 (the start of the Renaissance in Florence), 1776 (the independence of the United States), or 1876 (the invention of the telephone), the date is a culmination of a process that started years before and that continued to evolve for years afterwards. It's a kind of shorthand that references something that is without a doubt cheated when it is reduced to a date and a one-paragraph explanation.

But if you accept the premise of the 1976 turning point, then it would be impossible to find someone better equipped to tell the story than author and journalist George M. Taber. Mr. Taber was the Time correspondent who -- when faced with a slow news day -- decided to attend what was supposed to be a gimmick wine tasting in Paris nearly 30 years ago.

The results are well known: the 1973 Stag's Leap Cabernet Sauvignon and the Chateau Montelena Chardonnay from the same year handily beat their better known and costlier French rivals from Bordeaux and Burgundy -- despite being judged by a panel of French wine experts (no Americans were included). It was a man-bites-dog story that captured the wine world's attention.

"It seemed like a nonevent -- clearly France would win," Mr. Taber wrote, recalling his opinion before the tasting. But the event also seemed to "a perfectly wonderful way to spend an otherwise slow afternoon."

The final sentence of the article has become nearly legendary: "California (wines) defeated all of Gaul."

The account of the afternoon, the circumstances that led up to it, and the events that followed make for fun and informative reading. Mr. Taber gets points for being a compelling storyteller, with a crisp no-nonsense writing style one would expect from a veteran journalist.

My criticism -- as I write this I am wavering between awarding three or four stars -- is that the story seems to take the event too seriously. Even aside from the necessary shorthand of focusing on a single event to tell a larger story, it seems to inflate the importance of the developments of May 24, 1976 beyond that.

The word "revolution" appears on the book's 336 pages scores of times, but I don't think that what happened can rightfully be referred to with the R word. French wines were considered the best in the world before the tasting; they are considered the best in the world now. They fetch the highest prices at auction; their names are the most recognizable to wine lovers.

Mr. Taber contends that has happened to a large degree because after 1976, the French started to copy certain aspects of the California winemaking style. But the degree to which that happened is dwarfed by the number of ways in which California wine makers emulated the French both before 1976 and afterwards.

What's more, the very fact that California wines were invited to take place in the 1976 tasting proved that they were no longer from a land best known for the bulk production of insipid sacramental wines, as California had been in the 1940s and 1950s.

My guess is that the reputation of California wines would be almost exactly the same as is today without that fateful tasting 29 years ago and without Mr. Taber's account of it then and now. The only difference is that it might have taken a bit longer to get there -- and the tale told about it would probably make for a much less interesting read.

I found this a highly entertaining account of the growth of the California wine industry from the early 60's through the 90's. Taber writes in a breezy fashion without to much technical jargon. There are actually only about two chapters on the big tasteoff. Half the book is a prequel to how the featured winemakers arrived in wine country. Nice close about globalization that was fairly interesting. It just makes me want to buy wine only from independent producers.

About the same time when the computer disk drive was being invented in the prune orchard valley south of San Jose, giving birth to an immense new industry that would bring untold wealth to Californians, less than one hundred miles north, among the vineyards of Napa Valley that were abandoned during Prohibition, another high technology was being born. Wine making. Unlike innovation in computer industry, where nothing existed before, wine industry was some 4000 years old and an unlikely place for new ideas.

Yet, into this environment entered several young men with improbable Slavic names: Dimitri Tchelistcheff, Warren Winiarski, and Miljenko Grgich, and with even less probable winemaking expertise. While Silicon Valley, without any established competition was creating products with ease by thinking "out of the box", the vintners of Napa Valley, by thinking "out of the barrel" produced some fabulous wines. The secret eventually reached a wine merchant in Paris who organized a blind wine tasting of 12 best California wines and 8 best French wines. The only reporter attending was from TIME magazine, George Taber. At a risk of giving away the punch line, after the smoke has cleared in Paris ... the best red was made by Winiarski and the best white by Grgich.

Everyone who visits Napa Valley, once or often, should read this book. It reads like a novel, yet it effortlessly teaches you enough to start your own vineyard and make your own wine.

George Taber has done a great job chronicling the early stages of the ascension of premium wine in America and the importance of the 1976 tastings, which mark the beginning of the democratization of global wine. Well written and entertaining, he tells an important story that remarkably received little attention at the time considering the event's importance. In fact, Taber was the only journalist who attended the tasting!

Well worth reading and a must addition to the collection of any one who loves and cares about wine.

Just joking. This is a nice example of taking a here-to-fore (at least in mainstream culture) "event" and telling a compelling tale that is accessible to those of us who aren't oenophiles. Taber's book puts the pieces together in the first 150 or so pages of how the "revolution" that occurred in winemaking in the Napa Valley occurred in the 60s and early 70s. He introduces us to various key players, giving us just enough back story to get a sense of who they were (are) while keeping in mind the larger picture of how these people worked together and created great wine.

Ironically, the actual Paris tasting is dispensed with in what didn't seem to be more than about 15 pages (excluding background information, 1 page or so each, on each wine). Taber than pastes on what seems to be filler about the globalization of wine before doubling back to give the reader a "where are they now" ending. The book would actually be a better read at about 250 pages than the 310 or so that it is, but that is a very minor criticism viz a viz what is a very enjoyable read.

After far too many ghastly vintages from 1963 - 1974, and with the quality of backward French winemaking going unchallenged, the victory of New World California wines over their prestigious French counterparts in 1976 was, in hindsight, no surprise. Yet it was as great a shock to the French wine world as the collapse of the Maginot Line was to the French military establishment in May 1940. Unlike Andre Maginot, who never lived to see the tragic consequences of his and France's folly, French wine's top champions faced choosing between unbearable humiliation or dismissing the results as an aberration.

"Time" journalist George Taber, who had the wine scoop of the century and to his credit knew what to do with it, here returns to his moment in the sun, developing the storyline into a full book. He chronicles the persons who were at the tasting and who were most impacted by the results. Taber reveals their ongoing struggle absorbing the unthinkable, whether for the winning Californians, who at the time made up the new wave within their own industry and were given a grand opportunity; or in the case in France, where no such young wine Turks had credibility, and the fall out from the tasting was an unacknowledged PR nightmare. Unable to accept the cultural implications, many French refused to countenance the results - indeed at the actual tasting one desperate taster tried rewriting votes! To this day there exist Europeans who adamantly look down their - often Gallic - noses at wine from outside Europe. Yet increasingly, along with the tired fruit of those aging Bordeaux wines, such chauvinism more and more fades from respectable wine debate. Winemaking has moved a long way from the crude days of Napoleonic Minister of the Interior Chaptal's policy of using the French sugar beet crop for 'improving' the country's wines.

This book's major focus is humans, not the wines; Taber discusses the repercussions of the tasting far more than the actual event, though the curious secondary stories leading up to the tasting receive the sort of attention usually saved for more serious historical moments. The larger themes - of not resting on your laurels, and the facades that can be the reality of institutional image - emerge with an inexorable - and some might say, overdue - inevitability.

Perhaps it was fated these two birthplaces of democracy, France and America, should be the players in this most democratic-driven event: a blind tasting. (Lady Justice - by contrast - keeps one eye open just to avoid such unacceptabe results, and since the tasting any number of European wine advocates have sympathized and even embraced such a fallback.) Not surprising, too, that the more capitalist country and can-do Americans should triumph over the less egalitarian 'old world' of the more rigid and stratified hierachical universe of French wine estates, with their aristocratic trappings.

Complacency and arrogance are poor resources to contest with - and the French wine world got their ears boxed for just such attitudes. Instead of pulling out all the stops and setting bottles of '59 Lafite or perhaps a '61 Latour-a-Pomerol against the California cabs, or demanding the tasting include pinot noir, which conveniently was omitted because California didn't produce quality pinot noir, the French were snookered into permitting others a say in 'setting the table'. Prejudice and ignorance, kissing cousins of the small-minded and snobbish, got their comeuppance, and the French were hoisted by their own petard. Which in plain language means they foolishly set off the equivalent of a wooden wine crate bursting with gunpowder under their own carefully inscribed world of carefully controlled classes and prices. Generally unfamiliar with blind tasting's pecularities, where fruit and alcohol can trump more subtle qualities, the French tasters naively presumed an expertise they did not possess in comparing varietal wines from differing regions. They were blindsided. Almost none of the tasters had any idea which was domestic wine and which California wine. (Oddly enough, when the tasting was retried ten years later in America, the American tasters could not separate the wines by country.)

Recently the tasting was redone. Once again the French showed they haven't learned very much. French chardonnays, which from great vintages and the best sites can age and develop, were dropped. Once again pinot noir was absent. Chateau Haut-Brion refused to participate, but could not stop the tasting from buying examples of its wine in the marketplace. (Those evil entrepeneurs!) The original losing Bordeaux were trotted out again on the ignorant myth, long disproved by modern enology, that somehow wines with no great fruit when young would suddenly find some after twenty years of aging! The better made and fruitier California wines swept to total victory, sweeping the top placements. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

History was at work here. Yet this sort of challenge was not new for the California winemakers; for many decades avant-garde California wine makers, ambitious to compete with the very best, had been holding such tastings at home, measuring their Chardonnays against Puligny-Montrachets, Chassagne-Montrachets and Meursaults; while judging their best Cabernets against Pauillacs, St.Juliens, and Margaux. In the early seventies the influential English wine writer Harry Waugh, with an impeccable understanding of European wine, published a series of highly impressed tasting notes on these new esoteric California wines he had tasted in travels to California. A small handful of California's newest enologists were experimenting with a variety of new processes, especially in maintaining a wine's fruit. Now obscured, but then still potent icons for young winemakers, were extraordinary wines made by a few legendary wine-makers, such as Andre Tchelistcheff and the extraordinary Martin Ray. (You can read about Ray's colorful career in: Vineyards in the Sky: The Life of Legendary Vintner Martin Ray Those of us who tasted the best wines made by Tcheslistcheff and Ray were perfectly aware of just how good the best California wines could be.

Thus the potential for great wine in California was largely proven long before the '76 tasting - what needed to change was a scaling up so that more great wine could be produced, and this in fact was already well under way. By the the time the French were sitting around dishing the Paris Tasting results California was already bottling the watershed Cabernet vintage of 1974.

Talent's book makes stimulating reading for more than just wine snobs - what's in play here are larger issues, common throughout all levels of society.

I love California wines. As a Californian I am very proud of my home states history and heritage as the world's premier producer of fine wines. However, it has not always been so. Until quite recently, California wines were not reveared in such an august way. What happened? How did this change in world opinion occur? I have been curious about this mysterious evolution in Californaia wines for quite some time and after a friend suggested Judgment of Paris to me I began to hope that it would be all I had wished for. I was not disappointed. Obviously, I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys history and loves premium wine, especially wines produced in California.

The Judgment of Paris is such a tremendous book on many levels. It is full of tender and engaging stories about real people who, against all odds, helped establish California wines amongst the best in the world, culminating with their personal involvement in the now famous 1976 Paris wine tasting competition: The seminal event that turned the world of wine on it's collective head.

This book is also a fabulous review of premier wine making history, not only in California, but worldwide. If your knowledge of wines and wine making is limited or non-existent, you will feel like quite the connoisseur by the time you are finished reading. This is a really fun and informative book. Very well researched and extremely well written.

Cheers! to George Tabor for crafting such a wonderful `book-quet'. ;-)

Everyone knows this event was controversial. It is the tasting that allowed premium U.S. wineries to begin the meteoric rise in quality (and price) that we see today. Arguably, it is what launched the globe's infatuation with the "New World Style".

This is the story as told by the most reliable source available. Author George Tabor was the only journalist to attend this epochal event in 1976. He was a young journalist in Paris at a time when ex-pats gathered at the events held by British Wine Merchant, Steven Spurrier.

When Spurrier organized a daytime competition between the wines of California and France, no journalists answered the invitation. It is lucky for the U.S. wine industry that Tabor decided to attend at the last minute, or the results of this tasting would surely have been re-written by the shocked and embarrassed judges. A great read for anyone who loves wine and/or history.

JUDGEMENT OF PARIS: CALIFORNIA VS. FRANCE AND THE HISTORIC 1976 PARIS TASTING THAT REVOLUTIONIZED WINE provides a story told by the only reporter present at the legendary Paris tasting of 1976 - a blind tasting where French judges chose unknown California wines over their own best. Tabor surveys the event, its history, and its effects on the wine industry on both continents, providing a lively, captivating account wine fans will relish. Very highly recommended for any interested in wine assessment standards.

This book is second to none for learning about wine and California's rich history making it. However, it could be easily beat. It was disappointing to see that it's focus was primarily Napa. Napa was not the only CA region represented at the tasting, but wineries such as Chalone (Salinas Valley), Ridge, and David Bruce (Santa Cruz Mountains) were only given a page or so in the book. Wineries not at the tasting were discussed, but contrary to popular belief, the CA wine world does not revolve around Napa. What about Paso Robles or Temecula? The state's oldest winery (DeRose, in Hollister) was not mentioned. What about the very old zinfandel roots of Amador county? The grapes at Kirigin (in Gilroy) were planted in the mid-1800s. But in this book, the rest of the state just didn't seem to matter. Sad.

This book provides a good history of the rise of the California wine market and international wine competition. It could, however, have been a little better written and organized. I found that the repetition of wine making descriptions broke the flow of the story, but I did appreciate the information about the scientific advances. I enjoyed the stories of the pioneering wine makers, but so much of their stories were dragged out and then huge gaps were left out. Also, some of the stories did not directly relate to the competion and some of the wineries that were in the competition were given short shrift at the end. Still, I would recommend it to anyone interested in the history of American wine making.

After 30 years of tasting wines in the Napa Valley, I finally found a book that puts all the pieces together. George M. Taber recounts the famous 1976 Paris Tasting in intricate detail...and that may be the smaller story here. In a larger sense, Taber "connects the dots" that are the owners, vineyard farmers, and wine makers who crafted the wine history of this beautiful valley. Sit back with a glass of your favorite wine and savor the passion and persistence that revolutionized the wine industry of California and the world. Cheers!

Mr. Taber, journalist for Time Magazine, writes of his attendance of a then-obscure wine tasting in Paris in 1976 where classic French wines were blindly tasted by an esteemed panel of experts against wines brought in from California. The event was put together by Englishman, Steven Spurrier who owned a wine shop and wine school in Paris, and though not a booster of California wines per se, thought a competition might be interesting to his mostly English-speaking clientele in Paris.

I'd never heard of this tasting before reading the book, but with a Chardonnay from Chateau Montelena and a Cabernet Sauvignion from Stag's Leap taking first place in their respective categories, it's clear that the impact of this tasting contributed to the acceptance of California wines in the world market and a shot to the attitudes of French dominance of the wine industry. In fact, it may have contributed to the opening of the door to the acceptance of wines from all over the world. "Terroir" was no longer the exclusive domain of the French.

The book's strength is in the build up to the competition rather than just in the description of the event itself. Napa is explored from the recovery of an industry after prohibition, the arrival of poor immigrants such as Mike Grgich (the eventual winemaker of the winning white wine), the striking cooperation of Napa's winemakers, the technology advances provided by UC Davis and at the wineries themselves, and the injection of money from investors. Taber presents the history as a story rather than as a set of anecdotal technical references. It truly comes through that hard work, cooperation, and even a bit of luck led to the eventual success of Napa wines at the competition.

The story of winemaking in California doesn't end with the competition, of course, and the author presents a discussion of the next steps the industry takes after acceptance by world markets. An interesting read, and parallel to most any industry finding its feet then being exposed to international competition.

This book is a flat out excellent page turner as it goes through the general histories of the regions and winemakers involved, the competition in Paris, and the aftermath of the `surprising' wins by the California wines. Highly recommended.

Then Taber spends the last 20% of his book looking at a few wineries in a few wine regions around the world, and an update on the French and Napa regions since the competition in 1976. This all seems like incongruous useless filler to get the book from 240 pages to 300.

Five stars for the first 80%, none for the last 20%.

This is the story of the wine tasting event that put California and Napa Valley on the elite winemaking map. For those who don't know, in 1976 a British wine merchant stage a blind tasting of elite French wines against California wines. The judges were all French and expected to judge in favor of the French wines. But, the California wines scored much better and suddenly French dominance of winemaking was being questioned everywhere. George Taber was the only journalist at the event and wrote a small article for Time magazine. This is his story of what happened that day and the impact it had on the world wine industry.

I was fascinated by this book not because of its description of the events, but because of Taber's description of the people and the culture of Napa Valley in the 60's and 70's that led to premium winemaking in California. I really enjoyed they way he made the personalities of the key winemakers of the time real to the reader. It would have been easy to let this story be focused on the industry and economics, but Taber tells the story of the dreamers and inventors that made it happen.

My only complaint about the book would be that Taber doesn't know when to stop. The last chapters deal with the wine industry in other countries, such as Australia, South Africa, Chile, and New Zealand. I felt this got off topic and was unnecessary and dry. Still this is a minor complaint. You can always stop reading when you get to this point and you will have had a great time.

Recommended book for anyone with an interest in wine. Also, if you are planning a trip to Napa, the wineries in the competition are a great visit.

I bought 2 of these books for our annual family wine tasting contest. We set a category (ie, Pinot Noir and Savignon Blanc) and then blind taste for Best Red and Best White. The books were a huge hit for our winners. I had heard about this event for many years but never actually read the details until this very interesting book. ESL Charleston,SC

Mr. Taber writes in a very personal manner. He writes so that you are caught up in an almost novelesque approach to this exciting story. The characters he writes about come to life in a way that most of us would never get to see or understand.

Hard to put this one down, an excellent read.

I gave this as a gift to my father-in-law. He loves it so much he has already bought 2 copies to give to friends. He is a real wine buff and his friends know some of the people mentioned in the book, so it has made for some intresting discussion between all of them!

Viva La Revolution. True insight into the rise of Calif wine. The author's portrait of wine pioneers Winiarski and Grgrich is inspirational and highly informative.

This is a great holiday gift for wine lovers. So is Oldman's Guide to Outsmarting Wine and Oz Clark's Australian Wine Companion. All three are tops.

The best part about the great "Double Blind Tasting" is not that we won, or even better, we won twice, the joy is the well written account by someone who was there, knew the 'players' and saw first hand the tastings. There is so much information packed into this very readable book, that no matter what your level of wine experience, you will learn somthing new, that will give added pleasure to your wine experiences.

As a winemaker in the Napa Valley and knowing many of the people in the book I found it pleasureable reading. I believe anyone who is interested in wine will find it a great read!
Gus Anderson Owner/Winemaker Eagles Trace

"Terroir" is not about competition and market.
Trying to defend tradition and variety in tastes is not "arrogance".

Those who don't understand should watch "Mondovino" from Jonathan Nossiter.

I bought this book thinking is was all about the 1976 Tasting in Paris but it turns out that this book is really the history of California Winemaking and all of the characters that have put California Wines where they are today. For the lover of California wines, this is a must read. Once you start reading, you can't put it down.

As a life-long wine lover, especially of California wines, this was a revelation. I especially enjoyed the background of how these winemakers came to CA -- the CA wine history, plus the French history, all leading up to the event make for a terrific thriller.

Mr. Taber takes the reader inside the wine world with respect to judging, production and history. At The Berwick Wine Company we have made this required reading as it personalizes the winemakers and creators of the wine world. The reader should also note the difficulty in judging wine, which has
only become more difficult as the critics pull the terrior out of the vineyard forcing winemakers to stylize their wine for the export markets.

The story of people in the American wine industry and the wines themselves gaining international respect is documented here. This is a story that details the intersting people in the wine industry and literally the fruits of their labors. Wine is a a result of a combination of a crop that survives to harvest despite the threats of frosts , droughts and all the extremes the seasons can throw at the grower. Then the grapes are at the mercy of a vinter combining his knowledge of chemistry with experience and taste to provide us with a wonderful bottled elixer. Last year the best wine at an internation tasting was from SchillingBridge Winery in Nebraska, proving that this story of shocking the world of wine can be repeated!

Author George Taber is not a wine grower, producer, bottler, seller, or apologist. His connection to the main story in this book, the build up to a classic tasting competition in France of California wines against French wines, was that he was the only journalist to show up for the wine tasting. He wrote for Time Magazine, and Taber said he'd "...try to get there, without promising anything" (p. 163).

Ah, Malcolm Gladwell's tipping point was about to occur.

As it turned out, the California wines, both Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, came in first in blind tasting with some very well known French wine judges. It was shocking.... to the judges, the French government, and to the California wineries. They were THAT good?

This is the story of that tasting competition, the wineries involved, the wine makers, and the grape growers. Taber discusses the history of these wines, the history of wine growing regions, and the future of wines. Great wines can be grown outside of France? The cat was out of the bag. New Zealand, Chile, Australia... no longer does France spring to the tip of the tongue when discussing the very best wines.

In The Judgment of Paris, Taber stretches the narrative, so it needed to be more than entertaining... it needed to be educational. Luckily, this book was both.

I recommend it to the budding wine connoisseur! Read this book before visiting either Napa-Sonoma Counties, or France. Better yet, read it before your next visit to your local wine shop.

After 30 years of tasting wines in the Napa Valley, I finally found a book that puts all the pieces together. George M. Taber recounts the famous 1976 Paris Tasting in intricate detail...and that may be the smaller story here. In a larger sense, Taber "connects the dots" that are the owners, vineyard farmers, and wine makers who crafted the wine history of this beautiful valley. Sit back with a glass of your favorite wine and savor the passion and persistence that revolutionized the wine industry of California and the world. Cheers!

Mr. Tauber not only demystifies the world of wine to someone who knows little about it, but relates the wonderful story of devotion and hard work that goes into producing a top wine. I do believe that wine tastes better since reading this book.

This was a very good book. It filled in many of the blanks. However, Taber's proofreader should have been more careful... he/she would have caught Taber's mistake in referring to Jancis Robinson as a he instead of a she. It just goes to show that a non-wine person wrote (and proofed) the book!

Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine

This is not only an account of the historic blind tasting of new and old world wines. The author explores the background of the winemakers and personalities who established the Californian vineyards and promoted the technologies which enable us, the customers, to enjoy efficiently produced, quality guaranteed wines. Well researched and full of personal detail, George Taber has woven together a tapestry that illustrates the history and development of the Californian wine industry.

Another MUST READ for the wine buff / oenophile would be "NOBLE ROT - a Bordeaux Wine Revolution" by William Echikson Publ: W W Norton & Co New York / London. AMAZON should sell both these books as a pair.

Your next glass of Claret or Zinfandel will never taste the same.

This is a great read for those interested in how California emerged as a leading wine producer and those who were responsible.

Just as July 4, 1776 is celebrated as our independence day the blind wine tasting in Paris 200 years later is rightly celebrated as the day that California earned its much deserved place in the Pantheon of great wine producers. This event represented the culmination of many hard struggles by the wine makers of Napa. Mr.Taber cleverly describes the events leading up to the competition and all oenophiles will enjoy this book like a fine glass of cabernet sauvignon. Cheers.

While we all know what the outcome was, this is a great book describing the drama and history of this event. It also details the development of Nappa. Great book.

This is much more than Taber's account of the actual historic French/California taste-off. It is really an indepth look at the beginnings of the post-Prohibition California wine industry, especially the quality winemakers who were trying to do much more than provide good jug wines. There are wonderful family histories, anecdotes, analysis of wine marketing, and much more.

If you have only seen the film "Bottle Shock," you should read this book to see what really happened. It's a fun film but more fictional than factual.

This is a superb first hand account of the event that shook the wine world and turned it upside down; California wines came out on top and the wine world has never been the same since. This book is much more than a story about the event, it is a mini-history of California wine making, from the growth of small vineyards with limited production into the multi-billion dollar global business that it has become. With the California wines winning the tasting by getting the higher marks, California was thrust into the forfront surpassing the once highly regarded French wines. This competition changed everything as the California wine business began it's boom that continues to grow. As I said, it is more than a story of the competition, it is a story about the people behind the wine industry, the people who take the time to achieve world class wine, the people driven by devotion to producing the best. The book goes back in time to examine the early wine makers influence on that day in Paris. This is a great story with excellent mini-biographies, especially if you are a wine enthusiast. Recommended reading for anyone interested in the California wine industry.

Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine

Ordered this book after seeing the movie "Bottle Shock" this is so much more interesting. The movie was cute but a bit stupid ... The book is great with lots of real history and technical info. on wine that I find facinating.

Taber, a writer for Time Magazine when he observed the competition in 1976, pulls the story threads together in a mesmerizing tale of personalities, chardonnays and cabernets

The arrived in great shape and in a timely fashion. I highly recommend this provider.

I thoroughly enjoyed Judgment of Paris which was given to be by my daughter for Christmas in 2007 knowing my fondness for wine. It is a wonderfully readable history of winemaking and the vintners of Napa Valley.Iloved the descriptions of the various "characters" that are at the heart of the success of Napa wines. I also enjoyed the discussion of the newer technology and approaches. I've already given several copies to other friends. It reads best with a glass of good Napa wine so that one can savor both the history and the current performance.

A delightful read for any true wine aficionado, and a must for any would-be-wine-snob, this book is filled with facts that entertain and educate!

This is a good history of the California wines and the forces that made them. It leads up to the 1976 Paris Tasting that compared some California wines to some French wines - it gives all of the background to the wines involved, as well as the people. It is written by the one reporter that was actually present at the tasting. The book describes how this was a turning point in the development of international wines and the resulting impact.

Unfortunately it does not stop there. It then tries to give an update on the current state of international wines, and thus rather than a book about a point in time, which would remain timeless, puts itself at a point in time (2004/5)looking at the wine landscape, and thus becomes dated.

Received this book as a gift and was surprised how much information in contained in such an easy, interesting format. If you have vaguely remember something about American wines doing well in a French Venue, this is the book that will explain it all. The book goes further than the Paris Tasting and explores how the wine business has expanded world wide.

Most wine books are for reference, being about a region or a producer, or a collection of tasting notes. This book tells a story, and it's the best such wine book I've ever read. Campbell Mattison's "Wine Hunter" is also a good book but "Judgment of Paris" is less sentimental, and much broader in scope.

I already knew about the 1976 tasting and had recently read the Decanter coverage of the rematch 20 years later. In spite of this I still found the book interesting.

I seldom drink Californian wine, little of the good stuff makes its way outside of the USA and it is usually far overpriced. But still I found the book interesting.

It's more than a book about the 1976 tasting and how it came about and what happened. It tells the story of the creation of many of the Californian vineyards, winemakers, and specific wines that ended up in the tasting. But the book is more than this. George Taber is a former Time staff writer (who was living in France in 1976 and was the only journalist at the tasting) and his global perspective shows. He covers the implications of the tasting for California and for all of the New World, and for France too.

So I recommend this book not only to those interesting in fine wine but also to wine marketers.

Thankfully the book is absolutely not a rah rah we beat the French jingoistic celebration. Taber correctly points out that the facts that show that it's a stretch of the data to say that the Californian wines beat the French ones (especially amongst the Cabernets), the more correct summary is that it showed they were very competitive. Which is quite amazing given the youth of the vines, winemakers and general US wine industry. I hadn't realised that many of the wines were from such new operations.

Today it seems less of a story that very expensive Napa wines are competitive with very expensive French ones, but then there was a price difference and a huge perceptual one.

I was intrigued to read that even back in 1976 many of the winemakers of the `Judgment of Paris' wines were deliberately making wines in a different style to their neighbours. They were seeking elegance and balance, low alcohol wines, that were food friendly. They were quality obsessed and many of them were Francophiles when it came to their taste in wine. Of course, this is partly why the english Steven Spurrier and Patricia Gallagher chose them for the tasting.

I do wonder if these winemakers are still making wines along these lines, or whether they have bowed to the pressure from the Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate (which must be much stronger pressure on US wines that depend on US drinkers than on French winemakers) and upped their alcohol levels and sweetness ?

I will only point out that George M Taber is an excellent writer and as I am 90 pages into this wonderful book, I am compelled to rate this book 5 stars. I cannot wait to get home and finish the story!