TNWG Wine Times: Ep 62: California Dreaming — and Nightmares The Judgement of Paris

On 24 May 1976, eleven French judges gathered at the InterContinental Hotel in Paris to taste two blind flights of wine — Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon from Burgundy, Bordeaux, and California. The man who organised it, British wine merchant Steven Spurrier, was taking a calculated risk. He expected the French to win comfortably. He expected a polite, collegiate afternoon.

What happened instead became the most consequential moment in the modern history of wine.

A Chardonnay from Chateau Montelena in Napa Valley came first in the whites. A Cabernet Sauvignon from Stag's Leap Wine Cellars took the reds. California wines — then largely dismissed by the European establishment as curiosities from a glorified fruit garden — had beaten France's finest, judged by French judges, in France, blind. The judges were horrified. Some attempted to reclaim their scorecards. The French wine press largely ignored the result. Spurrier was accused of sabotage.

But you cannot unsay what the numbers said.

This year marks fifty years since that afternoon in Paris. And the industry that result helped create is currently fighting for its life in ways Spurrier could never have imagined.

The tasting that changed everything

The Judgment of Paris — a phrase borrowed from Greek mythology and applied to a wine tasting by journalist George Taber, the only reporter present on the day — did not simply flatter one Napa winery. It opened the door for every serious producer that followed. It told the world that quality wine was not the exclusive preserve of France. It told America that it could make something great.

That result opened the door for every serious American producer that followed, in Napa, Sonoma, the Santa Cruz Mountains, and beyond. The Judgment of Paris is not nostalgia for a single tasting. It marks the moment California wine earned the right to be taken seriously on its own terms, without apology or qualification.

Fifty years on, Chateau Montelena has chosen to mark the anniversary with two new limited releases: a 2023 Blanc de Blanc sparkling wine and an inaugural brandy, both drawing their Chardonnay from the same Napa Valley vineyards — John Muir Hanna, Belle Terre, and Bacigalupi — that produced the fruit for the triumphant 1973 vintage. These are not recreations. They are expressions of the same ground, five decades on, approached with what the winery calls curiosity and discipline.

On 24 May 1976, eleven French judges gathered at the InterContinental Hotel in Paris to taste two blind flights of wine — Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon from Burgundy, Bordeaux, and California. The man who organised it, British wine merchant Steven Spurrier, was taking a calculated risk. He expected the French to win comfortably. He expected a polite, collegiate afternoon.

What happened instead became the most consequential moment in the modern history of wine.

A Chardonnay from Chateau Montelena in Napa Valley came first in the whites. A Cabernet Sauvignon from Stag's Leap Wine Cellars took the reds. California wines — then largely dismissed by the European establishment as curiosities from a glorified fruit garden — had beaten France's finest, judged by French judges, in France, blind. The judges were horrified. Some attempted to reclaim their scorecards. The French wine press largely ignored the result. Spurrier was accused of sabotage.

But you cannot unsay what the numbers said.

This year marks fifty years since that afternoon in Paris. And the industry that result helped create is currently fighting for its life in ways Spurrier could never have imagined.

The tasting that changed everything

The Judgment of Paris — a phrase borrowed from Greek mythology and applied to a wine tasting by journalist George Taber, the only reporter present on the day — did not simply flatter one Napa winery. It opened the door for every serious producer that followed. It told the world that quality wine was not the exclusive preserve of France. It told America that it could make something great.

That result opened the door for every serious American producer that followed, in Napa, Sonoma, the Santa Cruz Mountains, and beyond. The Judgment of Paris is not nostalgia for a single tasting. It marks the moment California wine earned the right to be taken seriously on its own terms, without apology or qualification.

Fifty years on, Chateau Montelena has chosen to mark the anniversary with two new limited releases: a 2023 Blanc de Blanc sparkling wine and an inaugural brandy, both drawing their Chardonnay from the same Napa Valley vineyards — John Muir Hanna, Belle Terre, and Bacigalupi — that produced the fruit for the triumphant 1973 vintage. These are not recreations. They are expressions of the same ground, five decades on, approached with what the winery calls curiosity and discipline.

Dozens of tastings, dinners, and celebrations have taken place across the US and Europe throughout 2026 to mark the occasion. The anniversary has given the American wine industry a moment to pause and reflect on what it built. Given everything else happening right now, that reflection arrives with complicated emotions.

The worst trade shock in modern US wine history

Because while California raises a glass to fifty years of credibility, it is simultaneously staring down what may be the most damaging twelve months its export trade has ever experienced.

It began with tariffs. When the US imposed levies on Canadian steel and aluminium, Canada responded with retaliatory measures of its own. For most industries, this meant tariffs. For wine, it went further. Canadian provinces began removing US wines from store shelves entirely, and new full-year 2025 data shows that US wine exports to Canada fell 78% year over year, driving a $357 million loss in export value. The disruption reversed a long-standing trade relationship — turning a $254 million US wine trade surplus in 2024 into a $90 million trade deficit in a single year.

To understand the scale of what that means, it helps to know just how important Canada was. Prior to these actions, Canada accounted for 35% of all US wine exports, with a retail value of more than $1.1 billion. That is not a secondary market. That is the entire foundation of American wine's international commercial model, built relationship by relationship over thirty years, removed from shelves in a single working day.

Steve Gross, interim president and CEO of Wine Institute, put it plainly: "Behind these numbers are family businesses, growers, distributors, hospitality workers and entire communities who have no connection to this dispute — and yet are paying the price every day."

In May 2026, a delegation of executives and winemakers from fourteen California wineries travelled to Washington to press US officials for action, meeting with twenty-five members of the House, four senators, congressional staff, administration officials, and representatives of Canadian provinces. The meetings were cordial. The shelves remain largely empty.

The cruel irony of the anniversary

There is something almost painful about the timing of all this. The Judgment of Paris anniversary arrives in a year when the industry it helped build is being battered by forces entirely outside its control — not the quality of its wine, not the skill of its winemakers, not its ability to compete on taste. Politics. Trade disputes. Tariffs applied to industries with no stake in the original argument.

One Californian winemaker captured the frustration well: "Canada's by far one of our most profitable markets, and it's a market we've been working in for close to thirty years now. We always have the rule of don't put all your eggs in one basket. That being said, there will always be those people who may boycott California, may boycott US products. We hope that over time, that sentiment decreases."

The wine trade has always been politically sensitive — appellation rules, import duties, market access — but there is something particularly stark about an industry built on the idea that great wine transcends borders being caught in the crossfire of a dispute about steel.

What California does next

The American wine industry is not standing still. The same SVB report that documented declining volume sales also noted a clear gap opening between those wineries that are adapting and those that are not. The top quartile is growing. The bottom is shrinking. The middle is disappearing.

The response to losing Canada — at least among the more agile producers — has been to push harder into other markets, to accelerate direct-to-consumer relationships, and to lean into the premium positioning that has always been California's strongest suit. If people are going to drink less, they should drink California. That is the pitch. It is a good one.

There is also, perhaps unexpectedly, an opportunity in the Canadian crisis for everyone who is not California. Ontario wineries have seen such a dramatic surge in domestic demand following the provincial bans that the region now faces a likely grape shortage — prompting millions of dollars in capital investment and new vineyard planting across the province. One country's trade war is another's expansion plan.

The wine world has always been more geopolitical than it appears from the outside.

Appellation rules, bilateral trade agreements, market access — none of it is simply about taste. 

We are not the only ones who have issues here inside the UK with our tax regimes and the requirements on the industry as a whole to comply.

Fifty years on, that question is still being asked. Not in a hotel ballroom in Paris, but in committee rooms in Washington and provincial liquor boards in Canada.

The wine in the glass remains extraordinary. The world around it remains complicated.....

Tell me of other requirements that you know of in the wine and drinks industry that are putting us under intense pressure too. 

Best Regards

Andy aka The Northern Wine Guy