The French ... LOSE AGAIN

                         California triumphs in rematch with Bordeaux

California wines trounced Bordeaux anew in an epic rematch of a historic blind taste test credited with reshaping the enology world.

Wines from California's premier wine region were judged best by the combined scores of twin panels, one in California and a second in London.

Judges on both continents gave top honors to a 1971 Ridge Monte Bello Cabernet from Napa Valley.

The highest ranked Bordeaux was a 1970 Chateau Mouton Rothschild, which placed sixth. Bordeaux wines took sixth through ninth places, with a 1969 Cabernet from Freemark Abbey finishing last.

                              Remind me again just what good the French are.

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California triumphs anew in epic rematch with Bordeaux

California wines trounced Bordeaux anew in an epic rematch of a historic blind taste test credited with reshaping the enology world.

Wines from California's premier wine region were judged best by the combined scores of twin panels, one in California and a second in London.

Judges on both continents gave top honors to a 1971 Ridge Monte Bello Cabernet from Napa Valley.

"Maybe it is final justification that it held through all these years and did well," said Monte Bello wine maker Paul Draper. "I'm truly delighted."

"Ten years from now, all of us and all the wines will truly be faded and maybe we can lay this to rest."

The highest ranked Bordeaux was a 1970 Chateau Mouton Rothschild, which placed sixth. Bordeaux wines took sixth through ninth places, with a 1969 Cabernet from Freemark Abbey finishing last.

A rematch of the "Judgment of Paris," billed as the most famous wine tasting in history, was held simultaneously in the heart of California's premier wine country and at Britain's oldest wine and spirits merchant.

Among the nine judges that sampled and scrutinized ten unlabeled glasses of decades-old premium wines at the Copia Center for Wine, Food and the Arts here, was Frenchman Christian Vanneque, a judge at the historic tasting on May 24, 1976.

Judges in Napa agreed that wines from both sides had elegantly stood the test of time.

"The most surprising thing is they were all exceptional," Vanneque said after the tasting concluded. "I did not expect to have that much harmony among them all."

The event was "a wonderful sustained victory" for California wines because they held their own against the Bordeaux wine, considered the most elegant aging reds in the world, Vanneque said.

"There wasn't one wine that stood head-and-shoulders above the others," said taster Jean-Michel Valette, a master of wine at Robert Mondavi Winery in Napa. "These are all world class."

Vanneque confided he went into the tasting expecting "the downfall of the California wines."

Vanneque contended that while he was the only French judge on the Napa panel, his mission was not to "fight it out" with the Napa Valley cabernets that reigned victorious three decades earlier.

"I'm not going to think about which they are while I rate them," Vanneque promised before the tasting. "But after, I'm going to make a note for myself to see whether I can tell which ones are which."

Bordeaux wines have proven themselves premier aging wines, with three decades in age not considered very old, according to Vanneque.

A "pre-eminent European contingent" headed by renowned British wine writer Steven Spurrier lead a tasting of the resurrected vintages at the same time at Berry Brothers and Rudd in London.

"We now know that California wines wiped the boards with the French wines," Spurrier said by telephone from London.

"No French wine is every going to compare to a California red," he quipped.

Spurrier chaired the British panel of experts for the current event.

Spurrier also arranged the 1976 event to mark the bicentennial of the American Revolution.

The spotlight was on the Bordeaux and California cabernet vintages that faced off three decades earlier. Newer wines considered "the best of now" were also to be rated during the tasting.

Napa Valley wineries that put their championship status on the line included Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, which finished first in 1976 with its 1973 cabernet.

"I was shaking," Stag's Leap owner Warren Winiarski said when asked how he felt watching the rematch. "But then I thought if it doesn't prove itself as well as it did 30 years ago, so what?"

Bordeaux wines uncorked for the rematch included 1970 vintages from Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Chateau Montrose and Chateau Haut-Brion, and a 1971 Chateau Leoville-Las-Cases.  Link

Comments

[Phoenix]

I'd like a date with Steven. I bet he'd be a great conversationalist. But first I'd have to have a whole lot of wine.