More Napa Valley (Judgement Day)

After wine tasting several times in France, I have a new found appreciation for our great Napa Valley here in California. But Winespeed pointed out something rather startling: The most renowned winegrowing region in the U.S. is also one of the smallest: Only 4% of California’s wine grape harvest comes from Napa Valley, which in turn accounts for a mere 0.4% of the world’s wine production. (If California were a separate country, it would be the world’s fourth largest wine producer.) While the total size of the wine region is 500,000 acres (202,350 hectares), only 46,000 acres (18,600 hectares) are planted with grapevines. Despite its small scale, Napa is home to half of the world’s 12 recognized soil types, producing great diversity among the 35 different grape varieties represented.

When I have gone on wine tours in France, they always “bad mouth” our Napa Valley. Conversely, any of the Napa Valley tours rarely mention France at all! Do you think they are a little paranoid from the BIG “Judgement in Paris” back in 1976??

The tasting put Napa “on the map,” and boosted other areas of California now heavy with wineries, like Sonoma County and the Central Coast. Investment started rolling in, as did French people who traveled to the Pacific Coast to see what it was all about. What they found was that there was fine terroir outside France: fast-draining soil, plenty of sunlight, a climate that’s not too hot but not too cold. The first vintage of Opus One, a wine that prides itself on establishing the “ultra-premium” category in America, was produced in 1979. Spurrier believes it’s no accident that this collaboration—between American winemaker Robert Mondavi and French winemaker Philippine de Rothschild—had not happened earlier.

Katy Steinmetz:The number of wineries in California is today above 3,000, up from little more than 300 in the 1970s.

And the sound of France’s pedestal crumbling was heard beyond the Pacific Coast. “The most important thing in my view is the judgment of Paris created a template whereby unknown wines of high quality could go up against known benchmark wines of high quality, blind, provided they were in front of an incredibly reputable panel of judges,” says Spurrier. Davids from all over felt power to take on Goliaths. It was a great democratizing moment for vintners.

“It opened up the doors not only to Napa but other regions in the world,” says Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ Baseler. “That helped other people say ‘Gee, we can too,’ whether it was in New Zealand, Australia, Oregon, Washington, Chile.” Perceptions among people buying and collecting wine, shifted, too. And with France forced off its laurels, everyone felt a greater sense of competition, industry veterans recall, which meant the world was getting and continues to get more variety and innovation in its vino.

So, next time a wine snob from France tries to bullsh*t you about French wines, just mention “Judgement Day, 1976”. It will sober them up more than a triple shot of expresso in their morning coffee.

Here is the full story, which I love to share, over and over:

May 24, 1976. On this fateful day, France’s finest vintages were pitted against the cream of California’s crop in a blind test – and lost. A world first that sent the industry into a tailspin and sparked a witch-hunt like no other.

Organized by esteemed British merchant Steven Spurrier, the ‘face-off ’ was initially ridiculed by journalists, who refused to waste their time on a foregone conclusion. Only TIME reporter George Taber agreed, eventually, to cover the event–the only member of the press in attendance. “Everybody knows that French wines are going to win, so why waste a day?” he told TIME magazine. “It’s the giant and the little guy. Nobody took it seriously.”

Little did he suspect he was about to witness history in the making. Now known as “the Judgement of Paris” – for those who can even bring themselves to utter the words – the blind tasting invited a panel of nine French oenophiles to sample ten white wines (six Californian Chardonnays and four Burgundies) and ten reds (six Californian Cabernets and four Bordeaux).

To everyone’s dismay, not least the judges’, a pair of Napa Valley vintages came out on top: a 1973 Château Montelena and 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. Then all hell broke loose. French winemakers cried foul. Judges were branded traitors and pressured to resign from their various positions. As for Spurrier, he quickly became persona non grata, blamed for toppling France as a world leader and – worse – orchestrating the country’s wholesale humiliation at the hands of US upstarts.

So momentous, or calamitous depending on your perspective, was the taste test’s outcome that bottles of the triumphant wines are now held in the Smithsonian collections at the National Museum of American History. In true French style, some 40 years on, vignerons are still blaming the weather for their loss – arguing the early 1970s yielded particularly poor crops – and clamouring for a rematch.

Bottom line, it was a wonderful but perhaps rude awakening for our friends across the Pond. But nevertheless, well deserved kudos for our Napa Valley.