Judgment of Paris (wine) - Implications in The Wine Industry

Implications in The Wine Industry

Although Spurrier had invited many reporters to the original 1976 tasting, the only reporter to attend was George M. Taber from TIME magazine, who promptly revealed the results to the world. The horrified and enraged leaders of the French wine industry then banned Spurrier from the nation's prestige wine-tasting tour for a year, apparently as punishment for the damage his tasting had done to its former image of superiority. The tasting was not covered by the French press, who almost ignored the story. After nearly three months, Le Figaro published an article titled "Did the war of the cru take place?" describing the results as "laughable," and said they "cannot be taken seriously." Six months after the tasting, Le Monde wrote a similarly toned article.

The New York Times reported that several earlier tastings had occurred in the U.S., with American chardonnays judged ahead of their French rivals. One such tasting occurred in New York just six months before the Paris Tasting, but "champions of the French wines argued that the tasters were Americans with possible bias toward American wines. What is more, they said, there was always the possibility that the Burgundies had been mistreated during the long trip from the (French) wineries." The Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 had a revolutionary impact on expanding the production and prestige of wine in the New World. It also "gave the French a valuable incentive to review traditions that were sometimes more accumulations of habit and expediency, and to reexamine convictions that were little more than myths taken on trust."