Finally read George Taber’s Judgment of Paris,
the book that chronicles the fateful afternoon of May 24, 1976 when nine French
judges, in a blind tasting, proclaimed a California Chardonnay & Cabernet
Sauvignon superior to first growth French wines. I flew to London for a week of work yesterday
and am visiting Paris over the weekend, so I wanted to read it before I get to France.
The story of the tasting is interesting, and it certainly
has changed the world’s perception of where outstanding wine is produced, and
broken down social believes that French terrior is the only true land that can
produce world class wine. But the part
of the book that struck me as most interesting, and has my head spinning today
is the stories of the people behind both the American & French wines that
were tasted that day.
The American winemakers were generally people with a dream
to make great wine, people starting a second career, folks determined to start
businesses in a place that, they believed, had all the ‘right stuff’. People like Mike Grgich who was the winemaker
behind Chateau Montelena’s winning Chardonnay.
The stories got me thinking about how much I love the
lifestyle of wine & food, how I enjoy technology and my current career but
I feel something is missing. I guess I
would rather toil doing something more personally rewarding, being part of the
natural evolution of human existence than be a pure hearted capitalist running
a hundred miles in hour in the rat race. What the book means to me and what becomes of these thoughts are
unclear, but I feel a bit more excited about the future today than I did
yesterday.
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