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20 Wines that Changed the World

A legendary tasting that reshaped the wine world owed as much to its people as its bottles. Behind California’s victory stood a cast of pioneers and one quiet mentor who changed everything.

Group of people sitting at a long table with glasses and cups, possibly in a restaurant or meeting setting. The Judgement of Paris

The judging panel from left to right: Christian Vannequé, Claude Dubois-Millot, Michel Dovaz, Pierre Tari, Patricia Gallagher, Steven Spurrier, Odette Kahn (unseen), Raymond Oliver, Jean-Claude Vrinat and Aubert de Villaine.

The Judgement of Paris, back in 1976, would not have succeeded without its illustrious cast of characters. There were the instigators (Steven Spurrier and Patricia Gallagher), the facilitator (Joanne Dickenson, who flew the wines back from the US), the journalist (George Taber, who described the event in technicolour) and the publicist (Brian St Pierre, who ensured the New York Times got hold of the story). The photographer was Bella Spurrier, who captured the consternation on the faces of the panellists as they realized they couldn’t tell Old World from New. The consultant was Robert Finigan, who steered Steven and Patricia towards the most exciting wines in the first place. And the friend with the right kind of light, sunny space in which to host the tasting, was Ernst van Dam (food and drinks manager at the Hotel Intercontinental in Paris’s fashionable opera district). These men and women were the stars, and they all aligned.

But there would have been no California triumph without the 20 wines lined up for the judges on that celebrated day. We know that the French wines were good – they came from the top châteaux and Burgundy domaines after all – so for the American wines to win, the quality of what was in their bottles had to be astounding. For this, there’s a cast of winemakers to thank, too.

Winiarski sitting on a vintage tractor in a rural setting

Hats off to Warren Winiarski (pictured on the right), his story is well documented: on his way to becoming a philosophy professor at Chicago university, he took a break in Napa and never left. After an internship at Chateau Souverain, he worked with Robert Mondavi, then set up on his own. His piercing instinct for the detail of winemaking was such that cultivating his own yeast and buying electric blankets from a local department store to ensure his wines were kept warm enough to complete their malolactic fermentation, were obvious decisions. He didn’t take his eyes off those fermenting wines for a moment until they were oaked, fined and safely bottled. His delight at the news that his 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon, only the second wine to be made from his Stag’s Leap grapevines, had ‘won the Judgement’ never wavered. 

Man standing next to a large wooden barrel holding a bottle of whiskey.

Similarly, Joe Heitz (pictured on the right) was stationed in California during World War II and decided to stay on. After his day job as a mechanic in the Air Corps, Joe would take on odd jobs at night, one of which led him to the Italian Swiss Colony winery in Sonoma County. Wine won him over. With ‘Martha’s Vineyard’ (his own Napa wine), Joe is credited with being the first to champion single vineyard designation in the US. At the time of the Judgement, his 1970 wine cost more than twice the amount of all the other Cabernets.

Mike Robbins of Spring Mountain, whose 1973 Chardonnay came fourth among the white wines ahead of the Beaune Clos des Mouches and Bâtard-Montrachet, was a real-estate developer who also had a keen eye for wine. (He was also a life-long friend of the actress Grace Kelly.) His Chardonnays from the early 1970s were regular gold medal winners. The other ‘Mike’, Milenko Grgich, had also apprenticed at the Mondavi Winery. His earliest memories were of treading grapes back in Croatia (where he was born, the youngest of 11 children) so on fleeing post-war communism in his homeland, putting down roots in Napa seemed a natural decision. Mike’s affinity for wine taught him to watch for the starlings: when these birds flew in, he knew that his Chardonnay grapes were nearing ripeness – and when the grapes began to make a special squeaking noise as he crushed them between his fingers, he knew they’d reached exactly the required degree of sugar. The year after Mike began working at Chateau Montelena, his 1973 Chardonnay became the highest ranked white wine at the Judgement of Paris. He hardly knew what to say, but no doubt stretched out his well-known broad smile: ‘I’m born again! I’m born again!’ was his reaction. 

Bob Travers joined Joe Heitz as a cellar-worker in 1967, then bought the abandoned Mayacamas Vineyards (in Napa’s Mount Veeder) in 1968 when he was just 30 years old. He made tense, sturdy, mountain wines that were traditional in style, using natural yeasts and large oak vats for ageing. He’d hold his wines back, knowing that they needed time in bottle before showing at their best – his 1971 held its own in Paris, following closely behind Léoville Las Cases, but, according to Steven Spurrier, didn’t reach its peak until the anniversary Judgement, 30 years later. Out on a similarly wild mountain, south of San Francisco, Dick Graff became another California wine titan. He was a Harvard music graduate and former naval officer, who fell in love with the Chalone vineyard the moment he tasted its wine and determined to own it. Barrels were his thing: he almost single-handedly spread the word among California winemakers that fermenting and ageing in small oak, as practised in Burgundy, was the way to go. He imported and sold French barriques for the purpose. 1973 was the year his winery moved from the Chalone chicken shed to a new, purpose-built structure. 1974 was the vintage in which his wine was placed third among the Judgement’s Chardonnays.

Paul Draper found his way to wine via Italy, Chile and the Sorbonne in Paris. He joined Ridge Vineyards in 1969 and has been cellar master there ever since. Renowned for his careful, natural approach to winemaking, through minimal intervention ensuring his wines reflect every nuance of their terroir, under his direction the 1971 Ridge Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon was ranked 5th at the Judgment of Paris in 1976. At the 30th anniversary, in 2006, it was ranked first.

Steven Spurrier and his team were responsible for selecting and carrying these wines to Paris. These were the bottles that Steven felt, rightly as it turned out, were good enough to take on the great wines of France. But there was another layer to the story… Each of these wines came from winemakers who had been mentored and advised by one man. A man who, aged 20, had been left for dead on a battlefield in Crimea after his unit was machine-gunned in a snowstorm: André Tchelistcheff. 

Who knows what factors were at play that day. How dense was that snow blizzard and when, where and how the survivors were found… there’s no documentation to tell us. But Tchelistcheff (person on the photo on the right) eventually recovered and fled Russia with his family, going on to study agricultural technology in Czechoslovakia, then microbiology, oenology and fermentation at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. His studies were remarkable enough to earn him worldwide offers of work. He chose California, where the new style of Cabernet Sauvignon he quickly defined there – through use of precise, science-based techniques, temperature-controlled fermentation, controlled malolactic and the use of small oak barrels – led to his recognition as ‘the dean of American winemakers’.

André Tchelistcheff’s name should join the stars of the Judgement of Paris firmament. He, and those he taught, changed the quality of wine from California and opened people’s eyes to the fact (and it now was a fact) that this state could produce wines to rival the French Classics. It proved that a thousand-year heritage wasn’t a necessary part of producing nuanced, elegant wine. And it changed forever the acceptance of newcomers to the industry. Now anyone could succeed.

You can find out more about the Judgement of Paris and what it still means for the wine industry today by reading our new book – published this May.

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