For the American wine connoisseur, George Taber’s “Judgment of Paris” reads like a favorite movie. Although we may already know the ending before we have even read the first page, watching the plot unfold provides great enjoyment nonetheless. “Judgment” examines the historic 1976 tasting that pitted a handful of upstart California wines against the greatest wines of France, resulting in a stunning upset that created an instant paradigm shift among the wine community.
As Taber acknowledges at the outset of his book, however, the tasting was not even supposed to be a competition. Nor was [... read more ...]
