Book Report - Judgment of Paris

Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Wine Tasting That Revolutionized Wine is a book that looks to examine in depth one of wine’s most interesting events. Written by George Taber, the only reporter present at the tasting, the book includes his own primary source account, along with others who experienced the tasting and all the preparation that led up to it. It also focuses on the effects of the tasting, from the media coverage to the ripples felt across the wine world.

The premise of the tasting was very simple. Steve Spurrier, the owner of a wine shop in Paris, wanted to showcase new wines that were showing up on the market from California, and he wanted to be able to compare them to the historically great wines of France. White Chardonnays and red Cabernet Sauvignons were the California varietals tasted, while the French blends had those grapes as the majority. Six wines came from California and four came from France in each category. The California wines were selected because they were “representative of the new age of California wine” (165); the French wines were selected because Spurrier thought they would match well taste-wise with the American wines. A blind tasting was conducted to eliminate any possible favoritism from the French judges towards French wines.

It came to the surprise of everyone present that California wines bested the French wines in both the red and white categories. Even Spurrier, the host of the event, “selected French wines that he thought would easily outshine the American ones” (213). Some of the American winemakers could not even remember participating in the tasting – Warren Winiarski responded “That’s nice” to the news that his wine had won (209). Perhaps seeing the future impact on the wine world, one of the French judges, Odette Kahn, insisted to have her scorecard back. However, the true falling out from the event didn’t occur until Taber’s Time magazine article ran and larger publications such as the Los Angeles Times sensationalized the story. The reaction was varied, although generally the Americans were excited about good wines from their own country and the French were aghast that their own wines could be bested.

Over half the book is spent discussing the years of preparation that went into the making of the wines used at the tasting. Taber does a great job in developing the setting of the tasting – he explains why the French wines were classically considered the great wines. He also explains the attitudes of both participating countries towards wines and the winemakers in general. The French knew they were the best in the world and the Americans, in the course of attempting to make a great wine, modeled their own techniques after the French ways.

One of the great aspects of this book is how deep it goes into American wine history. The wines that participated in the tasting were at the forefront of the rise of Napa Valley and the histories of the winemakers and wineries involved are pretty much the history of the Napa Valley. Much detail is given about the state of the vineyards after Prohibition and the slow but steady rise of those who thought that California could be a place where fine wines, not just jug wines, could be created. Each winery that contributed a wine to the tasting was profiled, and special focus was given to winemakers Mike Grgich and Warren Winiarski. By going into the backgrounds of the winemakers the reader truly gets a feel for how those in Napa interacted. Many of those involved in making wines were on their second career and didn’t have a lot of formal training, so they shared information on a level that is unparalleled compared to other business enterprises. Their backgrounds may have been varied, but the stories of the startup wineries are the same – most had limited means or limited wine knowledge, but all shared a passion for making the best wines they could.

This book was also great for getting more details on vineyards and how grapes are grown. Because Taber focused on the growth of California’s wine industry from the beginnings, the book has a lot of information about starting a vineyard, such as how they chose the grape varieties to grow and even the customary distance apart to plant the actual vines. Much of the information that the growers used was based on research out of University of California, Davis, although there were many French influences. Winiarski specifically believed in the concept of terroir and bought farmland close to another winemaker whose wine he liked. By going over the details of the vineyards, the reader can get a sense of how the Californians made their wines. Some looked to the French, others looked to new concepts such as malolactic fermentation, but all of them were experimental in growing in a place where great wine had not been created on a large scale before.

The sheer number of facts in this book is, in some ways, the book’s best and worst feature. It is obvious that Taber worked extremely hard to get every minute detail correct. However, the constant barrage of facts made the book read more like the Zraly textbook at times although with less pictures and colors to help break up the tedium. I especially didn’t appreciate the last quarter of the book because the excruciating detail was applied to the changing economics of wine and profiles of many new world wineries. While I understand that Taber was trying to bring across exactly how much the geography of wine has changed since the tasting, I could have done without an entire chapter on sales statistics.

I think one of Taber’s main points for writing this book was to clear up any misconceptions that may have existed from the fallout of the tasting. As he was the only reporter present, I think he has a credible opinion on the situation and I am glad that he expanded on the details of the tasting. Many of the accusations leveled against Spurrier and the tasting imply that Spurrier favored the Americans to win, either by tasting order or by the number of American bottles tasted. Taber addresses every concern thoroughly in the book, attributing many of the flaws in the tasting to flaws present in most blind tastings, or as a result of naivety on Spurrier’s account. The point was driven home multiple times – no one expected the results of the tasting to be so controversial, it was only supposed to be “an interesting afternoon tasting and not an event that experts would be arguing about three decades later” (185).

Overall, I thought Judgment of Paris was a book that provided a significant amount of wine knowledge packed into just over three hundred pages. The writing and presentation of the facts was tedious at times, but that does not take away from how much about wine you can learn from the book.  I would recommend this book to wine lovers, especially those who are in love with California wines or those who are interested in learning more about American wines in general. I would not recommend attempting to read this continuously like a novel, as I think it would become very boring and then you would not be able to appreciate the knowledge you could gain.