Deluca Liquor & Wine hosted a lecture of famed wine writer George M. Taber, author of “Judgment of Paris”, about the 1976 tasting which put Californian wines on the map.

George was there to present his new book, “To Cork or not to Cork”, which focuses on the dilemma about cork problems the wine industry has encountered and what alternatives there are to remedy to this problem.  But first he took Q&A on “Judgment of Paris”.  For your information, I do own this book. For those who do not know about the Paris Tasting in 1976, it is considered the pivotal point for the new world wines and the wake up call for the old world.  In a nut shell, Californian wines where voted better than French wines in a blind tasting by French wine experts. You can imagine the outcome when the results were revealed. The judges gasped, whispers broke out and all you could here was “ce n’est pas possible!”
Now not to take the defense of the French wines, I do have a few objections to how the vintages were selected for the Burgundy White Wines.  1973 was one of the worst vintages for Burgundy in the last 40 years or so. That is a fact.  Where as 1973 was a fairly decent year for California. For those of you who have read my previous article on blind tasting and how I like horizontal tasting for the same AOC/AVA, in this situation, it would have been a little harder to do. As California and Burgundy are not in the same region, what might be considered a good year in California might not be considered a good year in Burgundy.  As for the red wines selected for the tasting, the quality of the vintages used was much fairer.
In conclusion, I am grateful for this tasting as it forces winemakers from around the world to be more diligent and not to give up trying to constantly make a better wine. That is why today we can enjoy as George so well said “the golden age of wines”.