Wine II

George Taber's book ranges over many topics related to the May, 1976, blind comparison of several wines from brand-new California producers with comparable awe-inspiring French counterparts. The details of this event are the centerpiece of the book. Taber was the only journalist who attended, and his article in Time Magazine was critical to the event's later importance.

In June 2005, a French export expert told Taber that France is now considered "le has-been." (p. 283) In several ways, Taber's suggests what a number of books have been saying for years, and are still saying so in some new books this summer: France is falling behind and barely knows it. In Taber's case, the French public, and French journalists and periodicals, refused to hear the results of the 1976 wine tasting, dismissing it, vilifying the organizer, or even falsifying their reports. While French wine growers and wine makers did pay attention and modernized some of their practices, French law, tradition, and public opinion make it almost impossible for them to adapt in order to stay competitive in the changing marketplace. I think this is the message of the book.

The Judgment of Paris is full of detail about wine and its history. Though the main focus is on the wines that figured in the famous 1976 tasting, Taber begins with a history of wine in the New World -- Chapter 3, "The New Eden."

I think I like the historic parts best -- so that's what I'm talking about here. At the very beginning of Taber's history are the fox grapes that inspired the Viking explorers to name their short-lived colony "Vineland" in around the year 1000.

Continuing with the colonization of America, in the first Virginia colony, planting grapevines was mandatory. In California in the eighteenth century, Father Serra started wine cultivation, growing vines in San Diego. Later, Thomas Jefferson was a lover of French wine, as well as a farmer. He experimented with native grapes -- which don't make good wine. Joseph Chapman of Massachusetts started the first commercial winery in California in 1826. The development of California vineyards was of course derailled by Prohibition. And so Taber arrives at the effort to produce good wine in post-war California, the main subject of the book.

The main body of the work, which I'm not going into, describes how a few dedicated individuals began their wineries, used the new knowledge created at UC Davis, and created a new remarkable product. They of course were rewarded with the unexpected high showing at the wine tasting central to the book.

Finally, Taber also provides an overview of the globalization of the wine trade since then. I find some of the historic snippets very interesting:

South Africa's vineyards predate some of the oldest in Bordeaux. The Dutchman Jan van Riebeeck planted the first grapes in South Africa in 1655. (p. 254)

As in other parts of the New World, wine followed the flag and the Roman Catholic Church to Chile. ... The first Chilean vintage was in 1551. (p. 264)

Note: I took the photo in the vineyards of Napa Valley a couple of years ago.