suck it, frenchy, no one likes a sore loser



The Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 or the Judgment of Paris was a wine competition organized in Paris on 24 May 1976 by Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant, in which French judges did blind tasting of top-quality chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon wines from France and from California. A California wine rated best in each category, which caused surprise as France was generally regarded as being the foremost producer of the world's best wines. Spurrier sold only French wine and believed that the California wines would not win.

Although Spurrier had invited many reporters to the original 1976 tasting, the only reporter to attend was George Taber from TIME magazine, who promptly revealed the results to the world. The horrified and enraged leaders of the French wine industry then banned Spurrier from the nation's prestige wine-tasting tour for a year, apparently as punishment for the damage his tasting had done to its former image of superiority. The tasting was not significant for the French press who almost ignored the story. After nearly three months, Le Figaro published an article titled "Did the war of the cru take place?" describing the results as "laughable," and said they "cannot be taken seriously." Six months after the tasting, Le Monde wrote a similarly toned article.