The Judgment of Paris, also known as the 1976 tasting, is the name given to a wine competition organized on May 24, 1976 at the InterContinental Hotel in Paris by British wine merchant Steven Spurrier and American Patricia Gallagher, and recounted by journalist George Taber in a book of the same name1. Using the celebration of the bicentenary of American Independence as a pretext, the tasting was blind, bringing together French and Californian wines, Chardonnay-based whites and Cabernet Sauvignon-based reds. Spurrier, then owner of Caves de la Madeleine in Paris, sold almost exclusively French wines, and didn’t think California wines would win.

The judges

The eleven judges chosen for the tasting were Odette Kahn, editor-in-chief of Revue du Vin de France, Jean-Claude Vrinat of Taillevent, Raymond Oliver of Le Grand Véfour, sommelier Christian Vanneque of La Tour d’Argent, Aubert de Villaine of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Pierre Tari of Château Giscours, Pierre Bréjoux of the Institut national des Appellations d’origine, Michel Dovaz of the Institut du vin, Claude Dubois-Millot of Gault-Millau, and finally the event’s organizers, Steven Spurrier and Patricia Gallagher of the Académie du vin, an oenophile school founded by Spurrier. Spurrier and Gallagher also scored the wines tasted, but only the votes of the French judges were counted in the final tally1. The tasting was done blind, in neutral bottles, so as not to reveal to the judges the nationality of the wine they were tasting.

Spurrier asked the judges to score the wines out of 20, according to four criteria: color and clarity, nose, mouthfeel and harmony. A glass of 1974 Chablis was served to the judges to whet their appetites.