Birth of the Napa Valley The Paris Tasting of 1976

Well I came here in 1960 and Napa was probably Napa Valley was closer to 1940 than it was to 1980 in 1960 it was still there wasn’t their mind before young drill really it was an unpaved Road a gravel road certainly there were no restaurants all that changed in 1976

When a wine-tasting in Paris staged by two expats patricia gallagher an american writer living in france and Steven Spurrier a British wine salesman put California on the map Paris tasting was an event that came about through Steven Spurrier who was this kind of eccentric wine merchant based in Paris

He was looking for ways to promote his wines and given that it was the bicentennial year of the United States of America he decided to have a tasting with some American wines and to taste him against the French wines the media assumed it would be a sleepy little

Event instead Saturday May 24th 1976 rocked the world of French wines and brought Napa Valley world attention I heard about the Paris tasting first when I got an invitation to attend it and like every other journalist in Paris of the time I said this is a non-story nobody’s gonna ever write a story

Because everybody knew that France made the best wines in the world Tabor was the only one to get the scoop his article for time judgment of Paris spread the news around the world the story began when the pair set off for America to handpick six California wines for their tasting you’ve got Warren

Winnie our ski who sort of embodies the American dream of packing up his family and setting off to pursue something that he loves and wants to do you have my gergich who is a great immigrant story who you know born and raised in Eastern Europe comes to America through Canada

Because he can’t even get a visa to come to America I comes from a winemaking family and sets off to make great wine and does when the our ski made wine first tags leap wine cellars gergich was the winemaker for Chateau Montelena owned by Jim Barrett I really thought there they

Were just getting some wine so they could have a nice party something so we said you know okay they kind of have a tasting in Paris and I said well what the heck why not we’re we’re Americans and we’ll send our wine and Stephen was going around getting other wineries the

Road to recognition wasn’t easy for the Napa growers guys like Jim Barrett and Warren Winnie our ski weren’t born on the land they were lawyers and professors I just wanted to get closer to the soil and smell watch the grass grow and hopefully the grapes and see

The Sun come up and get out of the big city quite frankly but I didn’t quit my day job because I figured I this thing could be a huge flop these California winemakers like the French didn’t think much of the tasting competition they all

Knew who was going to win it was not a significant event it was just something we gave of wine to it went out of our minds we weren’t expecting anything so everything that happened was more or less a surprise after that Spurrier and Gallagher bought chardonnays and Cabernet Sauvignon then turned to the

California wine makers to help them get the wines to Europe he got a group of people who including some vintners who were going to France on a tennis and winery tour and they took the wines as hand luggage with them on their plane we physically carried him lugging him

Around you know those those six-pack dealy and then delivered him when we got off the plane well good riddance we’re not having to lug this stuff around anymore the tasting was staged at an historic Paris landmark well the undercount note was born as one of the most famous

Hotels in Paris it was just off the Rue de Rivoli just down the street from the Louvre Museum the wealthiest of the wealthiest could could stay there I remember going in that day I walked in at that point they were just setting up the tables waiters in tuxedos were

Setting up the tables to for the tasting eight of the ten judges that day were an elite group of Frances top wine tasting experts including a DEP con Doan of the writers Stephen was able to get those judges because of the reputation that he had built in in the French wine circles

And so kind of everybody knew Stephen especially everybody that was in the industry he didn’t tell them what the wines were but he had a group of chardonnays produced in Burgundy France and California that he tastes it first and then he tastes it a group of red wines based on Cabernet Sauvignon from

Bordeaux as well as California these wines are a judge absolutely blind they even decanted the bottles into no-name bottles so you know usually you put a brown bag around the bottle but they even transfer the wine to no-name bottles so there was no chance of anybody even have an inkling of what it

Could be well he had some incredible wines from from France they were recognized as being top quality wines no question about the judges confidently swirled and tasted the unmarked wines George Taber was there watching more for his own entertainment than to write an article for Time magazine the fact that

He was there and the fact that he was the only reporter was there gave him the ability to circulate and the fact that he was also a longtime resident in that assignment in Paris gave him fluency in French and so he could hear the comments that were being made and to recognize

Their confusion and their inability to tell their nervousness about whether they were judging a French wine or a California wine that was also a crucial point because had that not occurred had he not been hearing these comments and seeing their confusion the story would have been pretty much different

He had the identities so he could tell when they made a statement like ah back to France that they were actually judging a California miner and when they said things like this wine has no nose it’s got to be California it happened to be a French wine the French were totally

Confused they had no idea what they were doing and he was taking notes and of course he wrote about this in his magazine what Tabor revealed to the world was shocking the Americans had taken the top slots in both the white and red categories when the white wines were

Revealed surprisingly the 1973 Chateau Montelena – Chardonnay had beat the best of the French we’re talking of mines like pull anymore O’Shea and Mayer so all these wonderful romantic French white Burgundy’s had been beaten by a California chardonnay well the French went crazy well dude this is what’s happening we’ll

Just can’t be right and in fact many of the judges tried to get their scorecards back to change their scores then they tasted the red wines well surprisingly or not surprisingly when they unveiled the results from the red wine the Stag’s Leap wine cellars 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon had beaten the likes of

Chateau Mouton Rothschild Chateau Leia Velasquez all these incredible French wines and this was like the shot heard around the world it put California on the map and also Napa since Napa was the location of the chardonnay and the Cabernet that won the tastings here these luminaries of the

French wine world and here these American wines are picked by to them as being the top in in a blind tasting finally Taber realized he had a big story on his hands he called Jim Barrett who was on the wine tour in France he had won the top prize for whites I

Walked out and picked up the phone and he said this is George Taber of Time magazine well that’s the hoop part of it and that he worked for Time magazine everybody knew Time magazine was a huge thing and I was more interested in what he then said which

Was you know you just won the Paris tasting and I want to say hot damn but he says what she what’s your reaction like you’re asking questions and I said I thought to myself my mind was just racing I thought if I say the wrong thing they’re gonna kick all of us

Out of France if I shoot my big mouth off and furthermore if I do that they won’t let me back into the Napa Valley so I was really really kind of thinking about it and I said well not bad for kids from the sticks and he says well how did this

Happen I said well we’re building on the shoulders of giants when George Taber story hit the newsstands the California wine industry was born people were buying California wines not just across the United States but around the world the change across the Atlantic was dramatic the Napa landscape and the lives of the

Winemakers who were never the same again the prunes and the pears and the walnuts were taken out and vineyards were planted this was the Golden Age because we now had a standard we now had you know he had this Paris tasting that it was proven that California could produce

Wines that were appreciated and of course then sales increased we started to export all of that happened and tourists enter