Try this wine before you die! Why?
Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (along with Chardonnay and the help of an English fella) changed the wine world forever.
Up until the late 70s, the world of fine wine meant Europe, the Old World, with France at the apex. The rest of the world, the New World, made some wine but it wasn’t taken seriously. As Monty Python joked about Australian wine: it’s not a wine for drinking, it’s a wine for laying down … and avoiding. |
| The Stag's Leap Wine Cellars' 1973 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon took out top spot at the infamous Judgement of Paris wine tasting in 1976 | © Stag's Leap Wine Cellars |
This was all changed by an English wine merchant—the late Steven Spurrier. He’d heard there were good wines coming out of California, so he went to see for himself. More than please with what he tasted, he brought back a selection of Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays. These were tasted blind against some of France’s best offerings by a panel of French and English wine critiques.
The tasting became known as The Judgement of Paris and was documented in a book of the same name written by George Tabor. It’s well worth a read. There’s also a movie about the tasting called Bottle Shock with Alan Rickman playing Steven Spurrier. It’s good does take a bit of poetic license and is not as historically accurate as the book but an entertaining and easy watch even for the wine novice.
Needless to say, the Californian wines triumphed, and the world of fine wines opened up to include more than just Europe.
