Before the Judgment of Paris, there was the Battle of Versailles: Different industry, same result

Before the Judgment of Paris, three words -- and an event -- of moment in the wine world, there was the Battle of Versailles, another event which pitted an upstart American industry against a dominant -- and domineering -- French counterpart. And once again the results were tectonic; and provided the protagonists with the fuel that drove them to previously unimaginable heights.

The industry of record in the Judgment of Paris was Wine; the industry of record in the Battle of Versailles was Fashion. The story of the Judgment of Paris is told in a book of the same name written by the only reporter present, George M. Taber. The story of the Battle of Versailles is recounted in a tome of the same name by Robin Givhan, Fashion Critic of the Washington Post and 2006 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fashion Criticism. Information about the Battle of Versailles used in this post is gleaned from an interview of the author by Renee Montagne on the March 19th edition of NPRs Morning Edition.

Prior to 1973, as was the case for the US wine industry prior to 1976, "Paris was everything" in the fashion industry and the American industry took its marching orders from the Parisian designers. "Whatever the French designers said was fashion, ... the Americans said, OK, that's fashion ..."

The Judgment of Paris (the event) took place at the Paris InterContinental Hotel on May 24, 1976 and pitted six Napa Chardonnays (vintage 1972 - 1974) and six Napa Cabernet Sauvignons (1969 - 1973) against four White Burgundies (1972 and 1973) and four Red Bordeauxs (1970 and 1971). The wines were tasted blind. Attendees, based on Taber's account, were the judges, Steven Spurrier (the event organizer), two unofficial observers, Taber, and the wait staff. Spurrier had secured the room at the hotel as a favor granted by the Food and Beverage Manager with the proviso that they had to be out before 6:00 pm as the room was committed to a wedding at that time. At the conclusion of the tasting, a California wine had been judged to be the best in each of the two categories.

The Battle of Versailles was held on November 28, 1973 at the Palace of Versailles and was at once a fundraiser to help in the restoration of the palace and a competition pitting five French couture designers against five up-and-coming American designers:

• French designers
• Yves St. Laurent
• Hubert de Givenchy
• Pierre Cardin
• Emmanuel Ungaro
• Marc Bohan (of Christian Dior)
• American designers
• Halston
• Oscar de la Renta
• Bill Blass
• Anne Klein
• Stephen Burrows

The setting is described by the author (Hint: It differs a bit from the Judgment-of-Paris setting):

... there are men in, like, full livery with the white wigs and the uniforms. And people are arriving and they are the jet set of the time. And the theater where this took place is gilded and filled with blue velvet seats and fleur-de-lis, you know, embroidered on the curtains and the chandeliers.

The French presentation at the Battle of Versailles lasted two hours while the American portion lasted 30 minutes. The French had constantly changing backdrops and a full orchestra to flesh out their effort while the American set was a sketch of the Eiffel Tower and its music was a taped Al Green and Barry White soundtrack.

The disparity in time and setting notwithstanding, the show was a huge success for the Americans. According to Givhan, "It was a predominantly French crowd and they went bonkers ..." for the Americans. One of the keys to the American success was their models, 10 of whom were black. Again, the author: "There was a context of black chic that made the models particularly attractive. It was cool. It was progressive to use black models."

According to Robert Parker (a 2001 comment reproduced in Taber's book), "The Paris Tasting destroyed the myth of French supremacy and marked the democratization of the wine world. It was a watershed in the history of wine." According to Givhan, things also changed significantly after the Battle of Versailles, especially the way that American designers saw themselves. "... their success at Versailles convinced them that no, what they were producing wasn't less than, it was different, but it was just as good and in many ways more relevant to the way that women lived their lives."

It must have been traumatic to have lived in Paris in the mid-1970s. The persons responsible for the maintenance of French superiority took blows in that timeframe that they never fully recoverd from. And I am still waiting for Napa to build that richly deserved statue of Steve Spurrier right in the heart of its revitalized downtown.


©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Judgment of Princeton shows that NJ is about more than just Jersey Shore

When I initially saw the program for the recently concluded American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE ) Annual Meeting, I noted a segment titled Judgment of Princeton which was to be chaired by George Taber of Judgment of Paris fame.  I had not heard much about NJ wines previously and so did not feel that they had the relative pedigree of the Napa wines that went up against the French (and won) in 1976. This was, in my mind, David versus Goliath; and Goliath would win this one.  Turned out it wasn't that cut and dried.

Prior to the results being announced, Dr Orley Ashenfelter, Joseph Douglas Green Professor of Economics at Princeton University, and AAWE President, covered the ground rules for the competition. According to Dr. Ashenfelter, the French wines were all purchased. For the NJ wines, producers who wanted to participate in the competition were asked to provide one red and one white wine and these (100 wines from 50 wineries) were all gathered in Princeton. The whites were required to be Chardonnay and the reds Bordeaux varietals. The wines had to be made from grapes grown wholly in NJ and the offering winery had to be bonded in the state.

Below is Dr. Karl Storchmann’s (Clinical Professor of Economics at NYU and AAWE Vice President) recap of the tasting. This recap is used with his express permission.


At its Annual Conference in Princeton, the American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE) organized a wine tasting called “The Judgment of Princeton.”  It was modeled after the 1976 “Judgment of Paris.”  In 1976, British wine merchant Steve Spurrier organized a blind wine tasting with 9 French judges who were associated with the wine industry in various ways (wine journalists, critics, sommeliers, merchants, or winemakers).  In the first flight the judges rated 10 white wines, 6 from Napa and four from Burgundy.  In the second flight the judges rated 10 reds, 6 from Napa and four from Burgundy.  In both tastings, a wine from Napa, then a relatively unknown wine region, was declared the winner.  George Taber of TIME magazine, the only attending journalist, reported the results to the world.  The results caused considerable surprise in France and the USA and helped to put Napa wines on the global wine map.

At the Princeton tasting, now led by George Taber, 9 wine judges from France, Belgium, and the US tasted French wines against New Jersey wines.  The French wines selected were from the same producers as in 1976 including names such as Chateaus Mouton-Rothschild and Haut-Brion, priced at up to $650 per bottle.  New Jersey wines for the competition were submitted to an informal panel of judges, who then selected the wines that would compete.  These judges were not eligible to taste wines at the final competition.  The results were surprising.  Although the winner in each category was a French wine (Beaune Clos de Mouches for the whites and Chateau Haut-Brion for the reds), NJ wines barely differed in their average rank from the French wines.  Three of the top four whites were from NJ while the best NJ red was ranked third in the red category.  Prices for the NJ wines were typically one-third to one-twentieth the price of their French counterparts. 

Data Dr. Storchmann's; framework provided by author

A statistical evaluation of the tasting, conducted by Princeton Professor Richard Quandt, which was similar to an earlier analysis of the Judgment of Paris, further shows that the rank order of the wines was mostly insignificant.  That is, if the tasting were repeated, the results would most likely be different.  From a statistical viewpoint, most wines were indistinguishable.  Only the best white and the lowest ranked red were significantly different from the other wines.

There was a third similarity to the Paris tasting.  In Paris, after the identity of the wines was revealed, Odette Kahn, editor of “La Revue du Vin de France,” demanded her scorecard back.  Apparently she was not happy with having rated American wines number one and two.  At the Princeton tasting, both French Judges preferred NJ red wines over their counterparts from Bordeaux.  After the identity of the wines was disclosed, the French judges were surprised but did not complain.  In contrast, several tasters from the U.S. did not want their wine ratings to be published.


The judges for this event were:
Jean-Marie Cardebat, Professor of Economics, University of Bordeaux
Tyler Coleman, DrVino.com
John Foy, Wine Columnist, The Star Ledger
Olivier Gergaud, Professor of Economics, BEM Bordeaux Management School
Robert Hodgson, Fieldbrook Winery
Linda Murphy, Decanter
Daniel Meulders, Professor of Economics, Universite Libre de Bruxelles
Jamal Rayyis, Gilbert & Gaillard Wine Magazine
Francis Schott, Stage Left Restaurant, New Brunswick, NJ.

*********************************************************************************

So what did I think about the tasting? First, I am always amused when new world wines -- riper fruit, more approachable wines -- are pitted against relatively young Bordeaux wines -- later bloomers. Second, I had not tasted any NJ wines prior to the conference but tasted a number of the wines at the conference reception and at lunch on the first full day. With the exception of an unoaked Chardonnay, I had not been too impressed. On the post-conference tour we visited two wineries and tasted the wares of three producers. On that visit I had the pleasure of speaking to the owners, and tasting the wines, of Amalthea Cellars and Heritage Estates. I was heartened by both experiences. Third, in the wrapup, George Taber spoke about holding the tasting within the parameters established by Steve Spurrier in his Paris tasting. One of the diferences in the two tastings that I noted was the number of academics on the judging panel in the Princeton tasting when compared to the Paris tasting (There is probably no significance associated with this fact but I thought I would mention it anyway.).

What will be the impact on NJ wines going forward?. The tasting no doubt gives a moral boost to the industry as current and future owners and investors see vindication of their efforts and passion. The industry will also, no doubt, seek to gain marketing leverage from the event. As a matter of fact, by the time we visited the wineries on Sunday, they already had flyers showing how the wines that they were pouring had done in the tasting. Such flyers, and other leveraging of the tasting, will undoubtedly increase the sales of NJ wines at the "cellar door" and could potentially serve to attract new market entrants. The results may also serve to bring more press- and critic-attention to Garden State wines and cause shoppers to take a second look at a NJ wine label if they encounter such in a retail establishment or restaurant.

© Wine -- Mise en abyme

The Hybrid George M. Taber: Review of A Toast to Bargain Wines

George M. Taber, author of the famed Judgement in Paris, participated in a number of panels, and gave the Keynote speech at the recently held European Wine Bloggers conference (Brescia, Italy, October 12th - 14th), all on the same topic: storytelling.  In these public appearances, Mr. Taber mentioned his soon-to-be-released book A Toast to Bargain Wines -- even reading some passages from the book in an early morning workshop -- and I, at that time, resolved to acquire and read said tome when it became available.

The full title of the book is A Toast to Bargain Wines: How innovators, iconoclasts, and winemaking revolutionaries are changing the way the world drinks.  I found some dissonance between the title and the layout of the book, on one hand, and the title and the content on the other. 

In Taber's three previous books (Judgement in Paris, To Cork or not to Cork, and In Search of Bacchus), an average of 280 pages was devoted to the telling of the "story." In this book, what I consider "the story" runs for approximately 158 pages, with another 123 pages taken up by a buyer's guide to bargain wines; material which, in my humble opinion, and based on the title, is referential and, as such, would have been better positioned in an appendix. I read the "story" component of the book and set the reference material aside for use when needed. It is not clear to me that this is the best medium for delivery of point-of-use information such as a wine-buyers guide anyway. If you are in the grocery store and decide that you want to purchase a bargain wine, an electronic reference source would have greater utility.

In contrast to its prominence within the book, the presence of the buyer's guide is not indicated in either the main or sub- titles. At the wine bloggers conference we were told that our stories should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This story has a beginning, a middle, an end, and a buyer's guide.

In terms of organization, the book is divided into three major sections: A Global Business in Turmoil; The Iconoclasts; and The Wine Revolutionaries.  Each of these sections is preceded by a short introductory paragraph which, in my view, could have been aggregated at the front of the book to provide an overall roadmap.  I needed a navigation aid through the first four chapters; something to tie them to the title.  The first chapter (titled Embarassing Moments in Wine History), for example, seemed to have no place in the book until Mr. Taber ties it to novice tasting capability in a closing paragraph.  In Brescia Mr. Taber had recommended using an anectdote as a "grabber" to start a story and, maybe, that was the intent here but, if so, it had me faked out.

The book was slow-moving and somewhat non-specific through Chapters 3 and 4.  In the chapter titled Unravelling the Mysteries of Taste, Mr. Taber spends a lot of time on Tim Hanni and his battle to have the wine establishment understand that people taste differently.  The inclusion of Hanni's Taste Sensitivity Assessment was interesting as it helped in understanding some of the differences between reviewers' reports and helped me to understand where I stood on his scale.  While interesting, this chapter seemed broadly applicable and no significant attempt was made to tie it to the main topic of the book.  I raise the same issue with the chapter on wine judging competitions.  At the end of the story Mr Taber tried to tie these all into the reader being an arbiter of his/her own taste but by this time the damage had been done.  The attempt to correlate should have been done up front.

The story reached its pinnacle in the wine revolutionaries section and, specifically, the stories around the introduction of Two Buck Chuck and [yellow tail].  This is George Taber at his best, tieing primary and secondary sources together in a tightly spun yarn which is both entertaining and revealing.

One of the sessions at the European Wine Bloggers conference was titled Stories Never Told.  One of the shortcomings of this book is that it does not adequately tell the consumer story.  Iconoclasts, winemakers, gatekeepers all get their day in the sun; not so the customer.  When the writer segments the market, it is from the producer/retailer perspective: luxury; ultra-premium; premium; low cost; and extreme value.  No attention is paid to population segmentation of the type that has been discussed by Lorey and Poutet and Marion Demoisser -- and written on extensively in this blog -- which segments customers by drinking profile: regular drinkers; occasional drinkers; and non-wine drinkers.  The issue that I would have liked to see addressed was whether the bargain wines covered in the book are penetrating the regular-drinker segment (as implied in the subtitle) or whether they are increasing the number of drinkers by positively impacting the actions of the occasional and non-wine-drinking customers. This is a story that is of exceptional importance, especially to markets such as France which is experiencing declines in regular drinkers and increases in occasional and non-wine drinkers.

I have bought George Taber's books in the past because of his capabilities in research and storytelling.  In this book, Mr. Taber makes himself a part of the story.  Beginning in 2009, he blind-tasted five or six wines per day in order to come up with the final best buy list included in the book.  In the section on gatekeepers, Mr Taber warned us about their role and positioning as arbiters of taste, yet he plays the role of gatekeeper in this book.  And he does not even alert us as to his Sensitivity Taste Assessment so that we can get a sense of where his taste lies; that is after warning us in the body of the document to pick a gatekeeper who is most aligned with our taste and to then stick with that individual. 

I get the storyteller Taber brand; the jury is still out on the hybrid (storyteller-gatekeeper) Taber.

Book Review: In Search of Bacchus

Having built up great respect for George Taber based on his two previous works (Judgement of Paris and To Cork or Not To Cork), I was vey excited when I was informed by a friend that he had written a third book called In Search of Bacchus.  I took immediate steps to obtain a copy.  The book, published by Scribner, and subtitled Wanderings in the Wonderful World of Wine Tourism, is the story of the authors' exploration of "... wine tourism in twelve of the world's most interesting wine regions."

The book is structured as a series of 12 essays, each covering a wine region, with each essay followed by a two- to three-page accounting of a unique experience the author had had while in the region.  For example, the author bungy-jumped while in New Zealand and went to a "Black Tie in the Bush" event while in Margaret River, Australia.  Bookending these essays are a Prologue and a Conclusion.  The book deals with wine and wine tourism in the twelve wine regions but beyond that there is no connective tissue that ties it into a cohesive whole.  The use of an individual named Zimmerman in the Prologue as the jumping-off point for the entire book seems somewhat contrived.

In the Prologue, the author says that he set out to explore 12 of the world's most interesting wine regions but does not indicate why he settled on the number 12 nor did he define interesting.  In the discussion on the Bordeaux region, the author mentions that determining the best wine region in France, for the purposes of the book, was the hardest of the wine region decisions that he had to make.  This seems to indicate that he selected the best wine region in each country for inclusion in the book. If that is so, why is Margaret River the area selecetd for Australia?  Further, why is Georgia covered in the book and Austria, Romania, and Greece not included?  Why was China, the seventh largest producer, and sixth largest consumer, not included as the Last Frontier (the section in which Georgia was covered)?

While the author does not provide any insight into the structure of the book, or the order in which the essays are recounted, the internal structure of the essays are, for the most part, fairly consistent.  The essay generally begins with a historical overview of the wine region and its grape-growing experience and then launches into a discourse of the wine-tourism experiences of selected wineries in the region.  Within this overall framework, the author drops "rice grains" regarding places to stay, eat, drink, and visit.

The book begins with a fascinating discussion of Napa Valley and the prominent role that the late Robert Mondavi played in the development of wine tourism in the valley (the author has the disconcerting habit of referring to it as "the Napa Valley") as well as the battle between grape growers and wineries in Napa to define what was a winery and what activities a winery could undertake.  The outcome of this battle is the main reason that wineries do not, for the most part, have hotels and/or restaurants on their properties.  In the Napa Valley essay the author had particularly harsh words for Darioush ("Darioush Winery is a monument to Khaledi's homeland and its culture, but an insult to the wine culture of the Napa Valley") and Castello di Amoroso ("... might look fine in Tuscany, but stands out in jarring juxtaposition to its surroundings in the Napa Valley") wineries.

After discussions on South Africa (Stellenbosch) and Argentina (Mendoza) , the books begins to become formulaic and that detracts from the telling of the stories. It almost becomes less of a book for immediate consumption and more of a reference which one would consult before going on a trip.  The book continues with Chile (A Colchagua Valley), Australia (Margaret River), New Zealand (Central Otago), Spain (Rioja), Portugal (Douro Valley), France (Bordeaux), Germany (Rheingau and Middle Mosel), and Georgia (Kakheti).

When I first encountered the book, I thought it was going to be a pure travel book covering the author's travel in the regions and reported in the first person.  Such a book would be aimed at the wine tourist and would have the journey and experiences as the connective tissue.  Those first person experiences have instead been relegated to after-thought status at the end of each essay.  It is not clear whether the audience for the book is a tourist, tour operators, or wineries who have not drank the Kool Aid of wine tourism and I think that this lack of laser-like focus on the consumer (of this book) diminishes it slightly.

The historical narratives in the book are excellent and informative and Taber's writing style is easy on the senses. Based on his prior works, I think that Taber's strength is his methodical research (historical in the case of Judgement of Paris; technical in the case of To Cork or Not to Cork) and that skill is in evidence in this book in his historical treatments. Taber takes us up close and personal with some of the leading winemakers in these regions and even allows us to see them in unexpected situations as when Santiago Achaval, the founder of the Achaval-Ferrer winery grabs a guitar and provides the entertainment during an asado in Argentina. In the conclusion he tries, with some success, to impart the lessons learned, some of which could be applied by the adventurous tourist in order to improve the experience. 

During the narrative, I tried to make a note of every wine Taber mentioned.  This soon became tiresome, however, and I allowed my list to lapse.  You can imagine my surprise and pleasure when I got to the Appendix and saw that Taber had compiled that list for me, arranged by region and price in $US.  Sweet. While this book does not approach the prior two in stature, it probably should be in every wine tourist's backpack.