On May 24, 1976, a wine tasting took place in Paris that changed the world's view of California wines forever. The tasting was the brainchild of Steven Spurrier, an English wine merchant who owned an innovative wine shop and adjacent wine school in the center of Paris.
The unthinkable happened. Winiarski's 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars S.L.V. Cabernet Sauvignon - his first vintage produced with grapes from vines a mere three years old - was judged the best. The Cabernet had bested four top-ranked Bordeaux, including first-growths Château Mouton-Rothschild and Château Haut-Brion. The 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay from California bested its French counterparts.
TIME magazine's Paris correspondent, George M. Taber, was on hand for the tasting and broke the news. Less might have been made of the whole thing had the French tasters been other than top-notch - and had they been less disdainful toward the California selections as they tasted. The French tasters were stunned when the names of the wines were revealed. The impact of the tasting for California wines was immediate, like a vinous "shot heard round the world," as one observer put it, catapulting California wines onto the world stage by illustrating that exceptional wines could come from somewhere other than traditionally sacrosanct French terroir.
