A visit to legendary Chateau Montelena has been on my bucket list since I learned about The Judgement of Paris – the seminal 1976 blind tasting event that pitted new-kid-on-the block California wine against the great wines of France. If it sounds like an epic battle, that’s because it was. At the time, it was widely held that France ruled the wine world and all roads led to Paris. A young, intrepid British wine merchant named Steven Spurrier wasn’t so sure. Spurrier ran a successful Paris wine shop – Les Caves de la Madeleine – and wine school – L’Academie du Vin – and was an unabashed fan of French wine. He’d recently tasted California wine and found them surprisingly good… so good, in fact, he wondered if they might beat the French at their own game. At the time, French wine shops carried mostly French wine. California wines had limited production and almost no international distribution, so the French wine cognoscenti lived in a bit of a bubble.
