Tasting wine can be hard work. Really. I’m not talking about a weekend with friends tooling around wine country in a fun bus. I am talking about the high-stakes analysis of hundreds of wines in a single sitting: 144 Chardonnay, 125 Cabernet Sauvignon, 80 Syrah and 45 Chenin Blanc. That’s 394 wines, to be exact.
The task demanding such heroic efforts was to select the American wines that would compete in the reenactment of one of modern history’s most pivotal wine competitions.
The Judgment of Paris took place May 24, 1976. Organized by a British wine merchant, the tasting pitted top French wines against the leaders in the then-nascent California wine scene. The winning wines? A 1973 Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon and 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay.
The results sent shockwaves through the industry, upending long-held hierarchies and biases while conspicuously placing California wine on a map it had previously been excluded from.
Fifty years on, how have things changed? The California wine industry is an exponentially larger and more diverse force than it was that day in Paris. Which wineries now represent the apex for each country?
Two of California’s bright young winemaking minds decided it was time to find out. Pax Mahle started making wine in Sonoma 25 years ago with a particular focus on grapes most associated with the Rhone Valley of France, particularly Syrah. Today, under his eponymous label, he produces a wide range that includes Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc and Gamay Noir. Patrick Cappiello has been named Sommelier of the Year by every beverage publication of note. In 2017, he decamped from New York to Sonoma and shifted gears to winemaking under the label Monte Rio.
The two felt the time was right to revisit the premise of the Paris tasting with an updated version they are calling the 1976 Redo. “People need to support American wine more,” Cappiello says. “I was seeing such glimpses of genius coming out of wines in America that I knew would rival the great wines of Europe, and it made me feel like this was a realistic idea.”
To select American wines for the ’76 Redo, 11 wine industry veterans were recruited for two days of focused tastings. The goal was to choose five finalists in the aforementioned categories (Chardonnay, Cabernet, Chenin Blanc and Syrah). The finals will take place in May.
Any American producer wishing to compete in one or all of the four categories was welcome to submit its wines. Eleven states were represented, including lesser-known regions like Michigan and Arizona that have yet to gain widespread recognition for their wines.
Among the rules: Any wine failing to reach the finals will remain undisclosed, and the judges are forbidden from posting any reveals on social media.
The wine-tasting marathon
On a weekend in January, the judges gathered for two days of tastings, each billed as a 9-to-5 marathon with a brief pause for lunch. The venue was the winemaking facility shared by Mahle and Cappiello in downtown Sebastopol, a cavernous shed that felt a bit like a steampunk airplane hangar and provided little relief from the chill.
Seasoned professionals like this group have refined their tasting approach. Some preferred to start by only smelling the wine and recording initial impressions, while others wouldn’t jot a single note before tasting. Some believed that first impressions were the purest and must be trusted. Others revisited a wine multiple times to confirm or deny their initial suspicions. I used my nose, then my palate, sticking with the first things they told me.
The challenge was defining a mental benchmark for each variety. What qualities in a Cabernet Sauvignon would earn it a spot in the next round? What would make an American Chenin Blanc stand out against the greats of the Loire Valley? Could a homegrown Chardonnay compete with the best of Burgundy? Has American Syrah developed the nuance and complexity of top examples from the northern Rhone Valley?
I cannot overstate the challenge — both intellectually and physically — of tasting 394 wines in one session. Even with the disciplined use of a spittoon, the wine still finds you. Focus waned, and the senses fatigued. The casual taster might be doomed, but having attempted less ambitious feats of a similar nature many times, I recognized an economy of motion was critical.
I narrowed the lens, seeking only very specific criteria and stimuli. This allowed my palate to conserve energy like a seasoned prizefighter in the late rounds, resting against the ropes between sips.
The goal for Day 1 was to whittle the field to two dozen of the five finest examples in each category. This was accomplished via “forced ranking”: Wines worthy of progression to Day 2 were ranked, using each place number only once. As the day progressed, this rather simple task became foreboding. The gravity of the decisions triggered a crippling amount of self-doubt. The difference between 3rd and 7th place, for instance, could prove significant. Did I mention there were 394 wines?
I have tasted a lot of wine in a single sitting before, but this was a new frontier, and it broke me in a way I had never been broken before. It bore no resemblance to inebriation. At the end of the day, it caused a system and sensory meltdown that vacillated between paralysis and delirium. The wise and honorable next step would have been to retire to the hotel for some much-needed rest before Day 2. But we are wine professionals. So we went out to drink wine.
The state of American wine
The first day’s herculean effort had earned us a somewhat more leisurely Day 2. We were tattered and bruised but had managed to reduce nearly 400 wines to a few dozen in each category. In doing so, I had a number of observations about the state of American wine in early 2025.
The largest category was Chardonnay, which in the past might have caused overwhelming trepidation. But times and tastes have changed. Although many seemed as though they were engineered to achieve the same effect, that result was not a buttery, oaky, low-acid concoction. Rather, the large majority were fresh, vibrant and only delicately oaked. While the homogeneity was not entirely exciting, it was a welcome trend and suggested brighter days ahead for this noble grape that so many love to hate.
Cabernet Sauvignon was the other category represented in the 1976 tasting. Here it was the second largest but, for me, the least compelling. Trends in farming, winemaking and weather have conspired to super-concentrate an already formidable beast. The Northern California examples in the Paris tasting managed to compete favorably with and, in many cases, beat their Bordelais counterparts because they clocked in at 13% alcohol or lower, maintained focus and tension and displayed copious amounts of tobacco, sandalwood, pencil lead and what was then referred to as “Rutherford dust.”
While a handful were prime examples of that wonderful but waning model, temperature increases make it difficult to keep Cabernet from reaching or exceeding 15% alcohol in many renowned appellations. I sensed that a majority in this group registered in that range, jettisoning the aforementioned characteristics in favor of lavish oak and fruit compote. It was challenging to pick the standouts here, and I found myself nostalgic for a style of wine that is scarce today.
The most surprising category was unquestionably Chenin Blanc. One of the planet’s great white grapes, it is capable of staggeringly nuanced wines, from bone-dry to ultra-sweet. These heights have typically been reached in only a handful of places, most of them in France’s Loire Valley. South Africa also has produced some highly respectable renditions. In California, it has historically served as a more affordable facsimile of Chardonnay, a rather dull, anonymous drink that if saturated with toasty oak might fit the bill.
The 45 examples presented to us were vibrant and energetic and indeed smelled and tasted of Chenin Blanc. Telltale notes of stone fruit, honeysuckle, jasmine and flint were present in varying degrees. It was not hard to choose fine examples, but it was challenging to limit them to only 24!
It would be hard to argue that the most consistently triumphant category wasn’t Syrah. Like Chenin Blanc, this might have been a completely different result 10 years ago, when American examples had largely crossed the threshold from earthy, savory dark fruit to overripe, sweet blue fruit. It was rare to find bottlings that screamed of Syrah, redolent of smoked meat, saddle leather, violets and black pepper.
On this occasion, hardly any of the 80 offerings weren’t well-balanced, complex, spot-on examples. It was wonderful to see, and a credit to the organizers that they chose to include it. If I were to wager which category the American wines would perform best in, my money would be on Syrah.
Only the organizers know which wines have made it to the finals. Cappiello is fully energized by the prospects. “I’m excited to see what happens,” he says. “I don’t have any fear that we didn’t select the highest-quality and best contestants. I think no matter what, people are going to be excited to hear the results. I’m already looking forward to the sequel.”
David Rosoff is a wine expert and writer in Los Angeles.
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