Judgment of Paris by George M Taber

Author:George M Taber [Taber, George M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781416547891
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2005-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

THE CALIFORNIA WINERIES

Chapter Seventeen

California Wines at the Tasting

To take wine into our mouths is to savor

a droplet of the river of human history.

—CLIFTON FADIMAN

The twelve California wines—six Chardonnays and six Cabernet Sauvignons—that Steven Spurrier selected to participate in the Paris Tasting all came from wineries started or reopened in the 1960s and early 1970s. Nine of the twelve wines came from the Napa Valley, and three came from the Santa Cruz Mountains. Grapes that went into some of the wines, though, were also grown in Sonoma County. The wines came from a total of eleven wineries: Napa Valley’s Freemark Abbey was the only one with entries in both the red and white categories.

The wineries were all very representative of the new age of California wine. They were generally small operations still run by the founders, who were often on a second career. Most of the winemakers had been strongly influenced by the work done at the University of California, Davis, but they didn’t just slavishly follow the dictates of professors. They were always experimenting, trying to discover what could be done with their unique land and the northern California climate. They freely shared their successes as well as their failures. These new wineries concentrated primarily on just two grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, although they might produce some others as well. And in their search for excellence, France was their model. They tasted the best French wines regularly and candidly compared their own to them.

The other California wineries in addition to Chateau Montelena Winery and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars:

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