Wine Tasting Re-Enactment

Filed in archive California Wines , French Wines , Wine Tasting on May 4, 2006

I've heard of Civil War Re-Enactments, but wine tasting re-enactments?

That's a new one for me, and sorry, almost just as weird. This is extra weird because of the fight that is still brewing 30 years after the original wine tasting....Get over it already folks!

From Wine re-enactment runs into resistance: A small Paris tasting shook the wine world in 1976 when French experts ranked California wines over elite French vintages. The Judgment of Paris, as it is now known, gave California wines world-class stature. But French oenophiles charged that the tasting was unfair, and some French wineries have refused to participate in rematches ever since.

Thirty years later, as California's Napa Valley prepares commemorations of its 1976 victory, the affair is stirring up messy fights on both sides of the Atlantic. And some American winemakers are joining the French resistance to the planned re-enactments of the famous tasting.

The owner of the Napa winery whose Chardonnay won the Paris tasting is feuding with the man who actually made that wine, and refuses to appear at any event with him. Several California winemakers have declined invitations to a competition among newer wines that is part of the festivities. "Some of the California producers don't want to take the risk of putting their wines into a blind tasting," says Steven Spurrier, the British wine merchant who held the 1976 tasting and is helping organize the 30-year celebrations.

Ah...can't we all just get along and enjoy drinking and tasting wine?