How California disrupted the French wine industry |
Much as I love France, who sold us the idea of superior French taste in the first place? Why do we continue to beat ourselves up about their supposedly ultra-cool cinema, peerless fashion sense and exquisite food and drink? Has anyone contemplating the pool of congealing demi-glace set before them at a standard-issue Paris café been able to maintain any delusion of French grandeur?
As it happens, a significant blow to French national pride in these matters came almost exactly 50 years ago, at the Paris Intercontinental Hotel, where, in a blind tasting watched over by the world’s media, ten of the host country’s best vintages were set in contest against upstarts from California.
50 years ago there were just two categories: the good stuff (French) and everything else
50 years ago there were just two categories: the good stuff (French) and everything else
We should bear in mind that 50 years ago, in the world of wine, there were just two categories: the good stuff (French) and everything else. At the time, the nascent American wine industry occupied a sub-category below even that. One of the few US-based vintners to have brought his product to market was a young Air Force veteran named Charles Shaw, who started a small wine business in 1974. Some of his vintages sold for as little as $1.99 a bottle – and the moniker “Two Buck Chuck” passed into popular shorthand to describe the unpretentious table wines associated with the Napa Valley as a whole.
Steven Spurrier, an Englishman who owned a wine shop in the French capital, organized the 1976........