the oenophile network - wine shop, wine forum, wine blog and more!

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

The Oenophile Network Blog & Forum Links

Wine Blog
Wine Forum

Categories

•	Wine Glasses
•	Wine Books
•	Wine Decanters
•	Wine Periodicals
•	Wine Openers
•	Buckets & Chillers
•	Stoppers & Pourers
•	Wine Education & Fun
•	Wine Accessories
•	Wine Racks
•	Wine DVDs
•	Gourmet Gifts
•	Artisan Cheeses
•	Other Books
•	Other DVDs
•	Other Home & Garden
•	Other Kitchen

New Releases

•	The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008
•	The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq
•	The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood
•	The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
•	The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq
•	The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
•	A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
•	The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism
•	The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington
•	Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir

Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine
enlarge	Author: George M. Taber Publisher: Scribner Category: Book List Price: ~~$15.00~~ Buy New: $7.98 You Save: $7.02 (47%) New (10) Used (7) from $7.98 Avg. Customer Rating: 45 reviews Sales Rank: 6703 Media: Paperback Number Of Items: 1 Pages: 352 Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8 Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 1 ISBN: 0743297326 Dewey Decimal Number: 641.22094436109047 EAN: 9780743297325 ASIN: 0743297326 Publication Date: November 21, 2006 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Shipping: Expedited shipping available Shipping: International shipping available Condition: May have small mark or shelf wear / Legendary independent bookstore online since 1994. Reliable customer service and no-hassle return policy. / Judgment of Paris: California Vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine

Editorial Reviews: Product Description The Paris Tasting of 1976 will forever be remembered as the landmark event that transformed the wine industry. At this legendary contest -- a blind tasting -- a panel of top French wine experts shocked the industry by choosing unknown California wines over France's best. George M. Taber, the only reporter present, recounts this seminal contest and its far-reaching effects, focusing on three gifted unknowns behind the winning wines: a college lecturer, a real estate lawyer, and a Yugoslavian immigrant. With unique access to the main players and a contagious passion for his subject, Taber renders this historic event and its tremendous aftershocks -- repositioning the industry and sparking a golden age for viticulture across the globe. With an eclectic cast of characters and magnificent settings, Judgment of Paris is an illuminating tale and a story of the entrepreneurial spirit of the new world conquering the old.

Customer Reviews: Read 40 more reviews... Best History of California Winemaking June 14, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful 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. "I Was There" Book About The Wine World's Tasting Heard 'Round the World June 3, 2008 5 out of 7 found this review helpful 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. Judgemnt of Paris: California vs. France and The Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine April 28, 2008 The arrived in great shape and in a timely fashion. I highly recommend this provider. Wonderful! April 27, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful 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. A Judgment on Judgment April 1, 2008 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.

Powered by Associate-O-Matic

Customer Service

Contact Customer Service
Ordering
Tracking Your Package
Shipping Information
Domestic Shipping Rates
International Shipping Rates
Returns
Gifts & Gift Certificates
Privacy & Security

Subcategories

•	Africa
•	Americas
•	Ancient
•	Arctic & Antarctica
•	Asia
•	Audiobooks
•	Australia & Oceania
•	Europe
•	Gay & Lesbian
•	Historical Study
•	Large Print
•	Middle East
•	Military
•	Military Science
•	Russia
•	United States
•	World

Bestsellers

•	The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008
•	Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time
•	The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq
•	The Post-American World
•	The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
•	The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood
•	A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.)
•	The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
•	The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq
•	Faith of My Fathers

Untitled Document Disclaimer: This is an Amazon storefront - the products referenced on this site are manufactured and sold by parties other than the Oenophile Network. The Oenophile Network makes no representations regarding either the products or any information vendors offer about their products. Any questions, complaints, or claims regarding the products must be directed to the appropriate manufacturer or vendor, or to Amazon.com.