Behind the Scenes at the Original Judgment of Paris Tasting

Wine Talks is deeply connected to the Judgement of Paris. Not only were the Barretts good customers of our wine shop, Warren Winiarski stayed in our home on a trip to Los Angeles.

The industry was completely different then. California wine had always been a thing, particularly before prohibition. It had even made its way to the east coast in the 1800's. But then came that fateful day in Paris at the Intercontinental Hotel, the Americans won.

In Paris, there was a journalist named George Taber. He had heard about this tasting pitting California's boutique gems against the equivalent (at least from a grape standpoint) French stars. It turned out to be no contest and set the wine world on its ears. Can you imagine, French judges choosing American vintages over their beloved French wines? 

George Taber was the only journalist to show up...and almost didn't.

George Taber never meant to shake the wine world—he just happened to be the only journalist in the room when California shattered centuries of French pride. As you join us on Wine Talks, you’ll walk beside Taber through the candlelit salons of 1970s Paris, where the unsuspecting French sat down to a blind tasting designed to showcase their invincibility, only to watch that myth dissolve, glass by glass. In this episode, you’ll learn how a simple event—what began as a friendly challenge orchestrated by Steven Spurrier—ended up catalyzing the global rise of American wine and undermining the Old World’s complacency. You’ll get an intimate portrait of the Parisian wine scene in its heyday: corner wine shops, eager expatriates, and the odd British merchant shaking things up with unorthodox ideas. Follow Taber’s transformation from a young Time magazine reporter, new to France and mostly ignorant of wine, to the accidental chronicler of one of history’s most dramatic palate shifts. Discover how logistical headaches and legal loopholes almost kept California’s best bottles out of the competition, and what happened when French wine judges realized—too late—that their favorite “Meursault” was actually a Napa Chardonnay. You’ll hear about the aftershocks reverberating through both continents; how careers were built, fortunes made, and the entire wine business transformed overnight. Plus, Taber reveals the stubborn role of luck in history and how something as small as attending the right tasting at the right time can change everything. By the end, you’ll not only understand the Judgment of Paris, but also the passion, humility, and disruption that lie inside every bottle.

#WineTalks #JudgmentOfParis #CaliforniaWine #FrenchWine #GeorgeTaber #StevenSpurrier #ChateauMontelena #StagsLeapWineCellars #NapaValley #WineHistory #WineTasting #WineEducation #BlindTasting #WineIndustry #PodcastInterview #WineStorytelling #WineCulture #CorkHistory #FrenchLifestyle #NewWorldWines

 

1. Time Magazine
   Website: https://time.com
   (Armen refers to working as a journalist at Time magazine.)

2. Chateau Montelena
   Website: https://www.montelena.com
   (Referenced in the discussion about the Judgment of Paris tasting.)

3. Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars
   Website: https://www.cask23.com
   (Mentioned as one of the winning wineries in the Judgment of Paris.)

4. Charles Krug Winery
   Website: https://www.charleskrug.com
   (Referenced in a story about being poured at an event with President Eisenhower.)

5. Sebastiani Vineyards & Winery
   Website: https://www.sebastiani.com
   (Mentioned when Paul recalls stocking the shelves.)

6. Ackerman Wines
   Website: https://www.ackermanwines.com
   (Ackerman, a major New York wine retailer, is referenced.)

7. St. Francis Winery & Vineyards
   Website: https://www.stfranciswinery.com
   (Discussed in context of early synthetic cork usage.)

8. Barefoot Cellars
   Website: https://www.barefootwine.com
   (Mentioned regarding synthetic corks.)

9. Taylor Wine Company (Tayl

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
French winemakers had been living off
their old productions for many, many
years, and they weren't living up to their work.
And so that's why these California wines
arrived. Of all things, were the best wines that day, were
the California wines. Sit back and grab a

(00:23):
glass. It's Wine Talks with Paul K.
Hey. Welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay. We are available, of course, on your
favorite podcast, Hangouts, Google Play, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
Pandora, you name it, we are there and always sponsored by the original
Wine of the Month Club, touting some pretty interesting clubs. Now, the Napa

(00:44):
series, the Sweet series, the Natural Wine series, et cetera.
This is the beginning of an incredible series of
podcasts and interviews I'm going to do. And we're going to
start right at the core of this whole idea of the Judgment of Paris. I
have Mr. George Tabor on the line with us today, and
I just want to welcome you to the show, George. This is going to be

(01:05):
a lot, a lot of fun. Great. Well, I'm very happy
to be here with you. Thank you. Can you
tell us, I think this story needs to be told.
I lived through it in my teenage years. There was a movie on it,
Bottle Shock, which really didn't do the story justice. After reading your book,
what did the Judgment of Paris start out to be? What was Mr.

(01:28):
Spurrier's idea in the first place? Just the cursory look at it.
Well, he basically, you know, I was, you know,
he didn't consider it to be, you know, the type of
an event where, you know, the big winners and big losers,
but just basically to show people what was happening
in other places around the world in

(01:51):
making outstanding wines. So I've given this book
copies of the book, and you see them over my shoulder here. I've
given many out to friends who are now becoming wine
enthusiasts. And I had a young lady in the office yesterday,
just graduated from college, and she, her father and I are friends and
she wants to get in the wine business. And we'll talk about that, too, a

(02:14):
little bit. But I said before you do anything, particularly in California, you
need to read a copy of this book because it's going to tell you so
much about the history and what happened back in
1976, and that carries all the way to today.
And here's this wine
shop in Paris, rue de

(02:35):
madeleine. Mr. Spurrier is an Englishman, right?
Yep. Who fancied himself in wine.
And you're a young journalist
just out of college. A little bit more than that.
But, you know, I was, I Was still in my. I think I was still
in my 20s, certainly not 20. It was early. Early

(02:57):
30s. But, you know, I was. I was still a kid.
And so as a journalist, you. You moved to Paris, right?
Yes, yeah. And so I. And this young
lady is so interesting because she's like. And I want to go to. I want
to go to Europe, and I want to study wine. I'm like, wow, this is.
I've heard part of this story before, but what took you there

(03:20):
as a young journalist to decide that this was the place to go?
Was it. Was it the wine? Was it the food? Was it the lifestyle? The
French young girls? Was it the young women there? What.
Well, all of the above. I mean, it was.
You know, we. I'd heard a lot about life in.
In France, but until you really get there, you

(03:43):
don't appreciate what just wonderful things can happen
there. You know, the City of Lights
had great interest in wine.
All sorts of things just happening. The fact that Stephen,
who was an Englishman. Why in the hell was an Englishman

(04:03):
doing in Paris?
Why was it American? Why was I in Paris? And, well, the
answer is that they. They all were in,
you know, in love with the
wine and life size. Just the

(04:24):
wonderful things that happened where wine was taking
place. City of Lights. Yes, sure. Yeah.
So you're talking. When did you get there? 70 something.
Yeah, I was there about. Well, about three years before they
actually left. And you were. This part's just
my own curiosity because it's in your book, but I didn't quite grasp it. But

(04:48):
were you an employee of Time magazine or you're an ad hoc
journalist at Sydney? I was a full
employer of Time. Okay.
Worked for Time for a couple of years in the United
States. But then, you know, I had pretty good
French. They didn't have a lot of people who could work,

(05:10):
work, work the business, as it were, in. In
France. And so that's how, in effect, I. I got there. So
were you. You went there particularly for food and wine
or was. It was Time magazine stories? You know,
you. In those days, you know, you only, you know,
you'd have. In any given week in a story,

(05:33):
story, you'd have four or five stories that you would have to do.
So, you know, this was just another story. It was kind of the major
story of my life at that point,
which. It turned out to be. Obviously, we're gonna wait to talk about that, but.
So, yeah, the wine trade. And I'm gonna reflect back
in Palos Verdes, and there's one of your paragraphs Chapter 16 of the book talks

(05:56):
about Palos Verdes, actually. But that's where my dad's store was. And,
you know, the wine trade in America, particularly in California, was.
It was restricted to a few great houses and some passionate
people and some pioneers. There was certainly no trade. In fact, I love
talking about the idea that I would stock the shelves with
Sebastiani and it would say 100% cabernet on the label. Because we were

(06:19):
so proud of the idea that we didn't blend grapes in those
days. But my dad's shop was sort of a
forefront of Los Angeles. There were five shops. If you. If you talk to Bruce
Nyer, he'll tell you there were five shops in 1972 that you could visit in
Los Angeles to sell anything. And one of them.
So. So I know that Patricia Gallagher is part of

(06:41):
this, and there's this idea now. Rue de Madeleine. Okay, well, actually, I have a
different question. What was the climate of wine in Paris?
Obviously, the French love their wine. They're much more acclimated to it at that time
than America was. Was the corner wine shop
a regular thing in Paris? Oh, yes, very much so. And then,
you know, what Stephen was smart enough to

(07:03):
know was, you know, that he could become the wine
master for Americans,
Englishmen, you know, all the
foreigners around Paris. And that's why
he got there. See, he's due on the show, I guess he's coming
to Napa in a few months, and I'm going to meet him up

(07:27):
in Napa and try and podcast with him. He's a good friend of another
friend of mine, Melvin Masters, who's a great negotiat.
So here you are. How did you hear about
the idea that Steven Sperry was going to put on this
California versus French tasting? Was it a. Well,
Stephen had a variety of. Of

(07:50):
things that happened. You know, he would have.
He would do things that a lot of Frenchmen wouldn't do.
And so he would just, you know, if he wanted to do something, he said,
okay, let's. Let's do it. Let's. Let's. We'll get a couple of bottles of
wine and see what it tastes like. And that's
what. He was always there. So he always had something new

(08:13):
and something property that, you know, was.
Was. Was good for him. Something was going on because,
you know, his main job was, of course, was
to sell wine. Right? That's what. That's what he went for.
But, I mean, the English sort of controlled,
what, through the 50s, really, the. The distribution of Burgundy and

(08:36):
Bordeaux. In. In. In England. Right. They were quite
prolific in the trade of wine, French wine. Sure. For thousands
of years. Yeah. They pretty much run the show. Right. And so
he has a store. I don't know. I don't remember what Patricia
Gallagher's relationship with him was. Was she part of the school that he was putting
on? Is that what. Exactly. Yeah, they had. They had

(08:59):
schools and programs and things like that. And that's how
I attended a couple of those things. And that's how
I first heard about the judgment of Paris coming.
I was there. You attended those on. As a. Just a personal,
you know, education on wine. You. You liked wine?

(09:20):
Exactly. Yeah. I'm just gonna go check it out. Yeah, yeah. Because, you
know, wine was. Wine was still for me in those days, you
know, it was, you know, it was something
almost very hard to get your hands around
it. I just not. Wasn't an expert in it. And so, you know,
I just. It was great to have somebody like Patricia and Stephen

(09:42):
who could tell you about a wine tasting or. He also had
shops, yet he also had, you know,
visits around. Around the various wineries. Oh, yeah, right.
Little tours and things. Yeah. So
I just, you know, I just want to place myself there. Right. Because, you know,
if you read. If you read A Movable

(10:04):
Feast from. From Ernest Hemingway and you read about
the romance of Paris in the twenties, and you fast
forward. I think there was still tons of romance in the 70s. It was
still not as commercial as it is today. And the Champs du Lazees was
a place to hang out. And here's this young newsman's got a wine shop.
He's got a class. And here's a young American who's come there

(10:27):
to just document something in the. French
culture about wine. I mean, yeah, I was
in. In. In France at that time, but I didn't know an
awful lot about wine when I had grown up in California.
We never had wine at home, you know. Yeah, it's
true. Every night I have a wine today.

(10:50):
In those days, I never. Never just had. Where was. Where.
Where did you grow up in California? At Riverside.
On Riverside. Wow. Well, you know, that's the birthplace of wine in
California. Right, right. I mean, hucamunga in the 1700s. This is a
great story. I don't know if you've read the book from Francis
Dickenspiel. It's called Tangled Vines. It's an incredible story.

(11:15):
It's the. Let's see, arson, murder,
and fraud in the wine business. That's what the story is. So it
Starts with. But it starts in Rancho Cucamonga and the
plantings in the 1700s and how it moved to Napa, but that's a different
story. She's going to be on the show too soon. Okay. So you make.
You know, I grew up with the iconic picture

(11:36):
of. Of my dad's store. And my. And my father and I are standing in
front of his first display of the Wine of the Month Club. This is 1975,
and we had featured the Chateau Montelena 72 Chardonnay.
And, you know, we were well acquainted, but that was on his way. As a
very academic guy. He's got his master's in pharmacology, so he's trying to
understand wine. Having bought a wine shop and you're

(11:59):
in Riverside and the culture of wine really wasn't
around here. It was more on the East Coast, I think, probably because
we're so much closer. I think there was a lot more wine in those days
on the east coast than there was on the West Coast. In fact,
one of the stories. My dad was reading an article in the LA Times in
1959 or 58 when. When Queen Elizabeth came here

(12:22):
and Dwight Eisenhower hosted her and he poured
Charles Krug Vineyard select at
one of the lunches, not at the dinner. It was the first time a
president had poured a California wine there. So history goes back to the
50s. So now I've got Steven Spurrier
and Patricia Gallagher put on these things. There's a young George Tabor there who's documenting

(12:45):
things in Paris. And he. I understood from your book that
they invited, you know, Gomeo and
Michelin and all the rest of the periodicals and possibly some American
ones, maybe Life magazine as well, to come to this tasting. And.
No, no, because, you know, and nobody thought anything would be
happening there. I mean, you know, everybody knew the French were going to win. I

(13:06):
mean, of course, you know, that's. It's crazy to even
have this thing, but if you can have it, you know, the French are going
to have one. So do I waste the time of going to have.
But I was lucky, smart. I
decided to show up and see what happened.
You know, we kind of give ourselves enough credit, even when things maybe we

(13:29):
don't know that we're being lucky or that we're being smart. But whatever it is,
you know, it created this amazing opportunity. In fact, I have a
copy of the magazine here. And just to highlight that
Jim Barrett did walk into my dad's store after the June 7
edition of the Time magazine from 1976, and said, not bad for. For a couple
of guys from the sticks. Which became one of his famous quotes. Right? Yes.

(13:51):
And they had tasted together at Les Amie Devantes.
So tell me what the structure of the tasting was
from your book. It's very granular about what happened. But
he decided to use French judges, which is an amazing idea in itself. Right, right.
Yeah. Because, in fact, I think

(14:12):
one of the things that's really important to understand is,
was that the way that what Stephen doing was doing
was to try to introduce to the
French, not to the Americans,
but to the French, what was happening in wine
in other places of the world. And California, you know, it was just

(14:35):
one of the. One of those places that was also making wines.
Most Frenchmen never had tasted a wine,
but, you know, Stephen didn't. That didn't matter to Stephen. He just wanted to
show it to the Frenchman of what
was going on in the United States, especially
in California. So he invited chefs, he invited noted

(14:59):
wine authors, noted wine critics.
He got the best that he could do. Really.
He got the best. There was just no question about it. He didn't go out
and field and, you know, grab somebody and he's, you know, he
went and he went out and said, okay, look it up. I'm really important. If
you want to have. Have something to do today,

(15:22):
come and taste. Taste this wine. Tasting you. But you might find it's
interesting. But nobody had ever say, hey, the California wines are
going to win. Yeah. Well, my guess would be that they're like, oh, you know,
I'll do it for fun, to see some old friends maybe, you know. Sure.
Have a good time. Yeah. So. And it was held in a hotel.

(15:42):
It's still there. Forgot the name of the hotel now.
Yeah, he took it. But you got a room in a. Hotel in my book.
Yeah, it's in the book. And. And
they have. I forgot how many judges there were. Nine. Eight.
Yeah. Eight. Nine. Something like that. Yeah. And so tell me the bath,
like you're seeing there, you're this young man, you learned a little

(16:05):
bit more about wine since you got there, and you
respect these people that are sitting there and what. One of the things that
was really important was I was the only. Since I was the only
journalist that was there that day, I could get. Go around
and I could listen to the
winemakers do their

(16:26):
testing, make their comments and all that. So,
you know, very quickly, it became
interesting because the judges were starting to get
confused. You know, they weren't. They didn't just pick up
a glass of Wine and say, oh, that's, that's French wine.
You know, that's. Of course, that's, that's an excellent wine. Yeah, this

(16:49):
is other stuff. I don't know what this other stuff is, but that's, that must
be California because it's terrible. And then I'd look at the card and I'd
say, hey, that's the. They had just tried French wines and
the California wines. And these guys, guys, they liked California
wines better than they were. So the, but the format
was double blind. Right. Don't they bag them? And they actually.

(17:11):
Yeah, they took them out of their original bottle. So the Frenchman couldn't decide based
on. They made, they
did it all, you know, correctly. Yeah. And so that.
There's a comment in one of the, in your book and it's also my dad's
newsletter, which much you must have gotten from your article in Time magazine
about one of the French. One of the judges saying, ah, after you taste, I

(17:32):
think one of the whites, he thought it was tasting Meursault and he was actually
drinking one of the shards and he said something like, oh, we're back in France.
And he tried. What was the wine he got
right there. I mean, you and I know hard it is even
for a trained, a trained psalm or trained master of wine
to identify like that. Right. This, it's not that easy and

(17:55):
there's a lot of elements that could confuse you. And here these
folks are in this area and they're pretty confident. Now. He's, he's. Well, you know,
these, you know, these are the best
wine experts that France had to offer.
That's amazing. And so they, and now we've tasted all the white wines
and then they, they scored them by the group. So they did the

(18:17):
whites first and then they announced the results at that point. Yes.
And how was that? What was the temperature of the room at that moment? Well,
at that point, then there was a lot of concern. You
know, in effect, they had selected the
California wines first and so they wanted to make sure they were. It wasn't
going to happen the second time in a row. And sure enough,

(18:39):
second time in a row they lost. The California wines
won. Well, it's not French.
You know, they just did not understand what was
happening. When we look at the score and my dad published those two
in his newsletter and you have them here in your book. You know, the,
the Chardonnays, the whites dominated. They didn't just win.

(19:03):
Yeah, I think the top six spots were, four of them were, were
California or at least Half. And the reds weren't. Didn't fare quite
as well, but they did very well. Besides Warren's, you know, top
position, the other brands did really well, too.
And so I just, you know, so here's. So it
happened. Okay? It happened. And there's the stories of the judges wanting their,

(19:25):
their scorecards back and don't you dare, you know, take this off my desk and
publish it. And. Yeah. Yeah, they were,
they figured their job was on the, on the low.
Yeah, it could be on the line. Yeah. On Crayab, you know, this is impossible.
So you have these results, but it's still.
Right. Is it still a story at that point? Is it a story yet?

(19:49):
You know, it's probably confined to the, the, the streets of Paris at that
point. Even in your magazine
article. I mean, I'm going to pull it out here and just show the audience
that's watching the, that's watching the podcast,
even the. There's just one column in the, in the
magazine. Right. It's just, it's not, it's kind of buried deep in the thing. And

(20:11):
I don't even see a byline. There was no byline.
You know, time. Time did have, you know,
all the stories in the magazine were not, you know,
written all the. Covered by
somebody all the time. Yeah, there it is.

(20:31):
Was there. Was there a chance that this was not going to get published?
It could have well have happened because I think
if the California wines had one,
say, half of the competition, I think the time would not have
published the story really had to be that the California

(20:52):
wines had won in both categories, both
California and French had
won. Then, you know, then it was then, then you had
a good story. It was. But it was still a sort of a slow
propagation around the States for this to mean
anything. It just seemed like it still need attraction. Right.

(21:15):
And I know that even, I think you mentioned this, your depth of your
book is amazing and understanding it. And I have all my friends that have
read it now they talk about Mike Girgis, now they talk about Warren Wiarski and,
and here's, you know, I think what was it? Was it Mr.
Barrett or Mr. Wi was just sort of like out in the, out in the
vineyard and so goes, hey, we won. They're like, okay, great, you know, what's for
dinner? Yeah, they, they didn't have any contact

(21:38):
that. No belief in that. This,
this was going to, you know, change their whole
lifetime. And that's what it did. You know, it just made their
lives, it made their profits and everything.
Just suddenly California wines were
over the map and were

(22:00):
expected to win that day.
And they got, they got killed by, by the
French. It wasn't, Wasn't it also, though, at that time,
the French, the Bordeaux industry in particular was sort of
in. In his ebbs and flows anyway, but it was not in a
great state in the 70s. The popularity of its

(22:24):
sales volume, I think quality, quality control was
sort of. Wasn't there a problem there? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, the French winemakers
had been, you know, been living
off their old productions
for many, many years and they weren't living up to

(22:48):
their work. And so that's why, you know, when it here,
when these California wines
arrived. And what of all things were
the best wines that day were the California wine.
So it's. So that's fascinating to me because of those, you
know, you and I know we've been in this business a long time. We see

(23:10):
it ebb and flow. We see things come and go. We see, we see trends
come and go. Bordeaux, you always thought it's been here for 100 years or thousands
of years really, you know, well, since 1200, you don't think
there's anything different than what you know today. But there was these, these issues
then about quality and in production
quality, and now there's a chink in the wall, so to speak.

(23:32):
I want to just one touch, one thing. When you write a story like this,
and you wrote your story, you went back to your flat or your apartment, wherever
you're staying, you wrote the story. And today it's so easy, right? We can
just clip into an email or even just, you know, write a live in somebody
else's database. What did you do then? Did you type it
yourself and mail it? What was it teletyped? What happened?

(23:53):
No, it was, you know, at the same time had, you know, because, you
know, they had stories for everything, you
know, for, for, you know, stories for,
for several countries. And so, you know, it
was. It was important to have a good copy, clean
copy that would get to Paris and get,

(24:16):
get to California. And how did that happen? Was it just mail?
No, it was, it was telephone, you know. Okay,
yeah. Wow. Because you'll say we take it for granted today, right?
Here you are, here you and I are, talking on, you know, on a camera
in Rhode island, and we can say whatever we want and it's instantaneous.
But in 1975, that was a lot, a big difference. 76.

(24:39):
I'm going to read something. I'm going to read chapter 16, the first part of
this Chapter, because I want to. I'm going to step back now that we've understand
what the tasting was and what the impact in California on California wine was,
which we haven't. Twice. Correct. But the first sentence of Your book in 19,
chapter 16, page 155, is, in the summer of
1975, Patricia Gallagher was making plans to visit

(25:00):
her sister in Palos Verdes Estates, a wealthy coastal
community south of Los Angeles. Well,
I told my dad's 92 and still doing
great, and I was with him. I took him a copy of this book a
few weeks ago, and I read him this sentence. He goes, oh, yeah.
She goes. She says she came in the store. I go, what do you mean?

(25:22):
He goes, yeah, she came in the store, introduced herself and what she was doing
and that she was on her way to Napa to choose some wines or do
something, and she owned a little shop or was part of a shop in Paris.
My dad speaks French. So they had a little conversation. I said, you've never told
me this story. This is important stuff.
So it was this. In your book, you talk about how she

(25:42):
had to find a way to get to Napa, which she's obviously got up there,
but find a way to decide on what wines
should be included and then get them back there, which apparently, in a
logistical headache, to get samples back to
Stephen for the tasting. Yeah, because they were very
worried that

(26:03):
the control people
would not allow the California wines to.
To be. Be. And so they, you know, they had to make sure to.
To take the wines in with. With a group of
tourists that were coming in, you know, so it wasn't. It wasn't just,
you know, any freelance guy just wandering in and they

(26:26):
dumps it. Yeah, right. That's not like
wines. So there's a French import issue or a
California export issue, like the. Getting them out is not a problem, but getting them
in was the problem. Getting into France was
where the great problem was. And there was some
brainstorm with somebody that they're going to do this. They're going to put it with

(26:48):
the tourists in their bags or whatever they're doing. Exactly, yeah.
Because they were always fearful that
somehow somebody's going to take away these things
and end the whole story.
Yeah, right. So how did she decide then? And it's

(27:10):
in your book, and I want people to read it. But she goes around
and there's what, 50 wineries then, maybe not even that many.
Oh, California
25. Yeah. So she went and she tasted these things and
she said, well, and then she tastes Them. Do you know, if she
tasted them on a. With an opinion

(27:32):
of whether these things could win or just like, I need to find something
that is competitive. Well, she.
She wanted, you know, she wanted to get something
that she was sure would have the.
The expert expertise of these
winemakers to. To turn out good wine

(27:55):
products, you know, so, you know, so. Because these.
The winemakers and these. In those days, those. Those days
were, you know, most. A lot of them were still not experts
in this. You know, they were. They were. They were just still
getting started in wine. Right. And so
which. Which I. The story. And I have Violet Girgich

(28:18):
coming on the show next week, actually, and I just
can't wait to peel back Mike's story as an
immigrant to. Or an immigrant to America, an immigrant from
Croatia. And, you know, we know Mr. Barrett's story as a
local attorney in Torrance who invested in this
idea, which had to be a huge risk to think

(28:40):
about this. Pretty much. I mean, now it's a beautiful,
gorgeous place, and it's like Chateau Montalande exemplifies
the lifestyle of Napa, but back then, you know,
been shuttered for how long? And here's like, we're going to try and make wine.
I mean, not as a. Who had ever heard of them.
These were wineries that nobody had ever heard of

(29:03):
before. So there was no recommendation that, hey, hey, this is
a very good wine. This will tell us, you know, these were just wines that
happened to be there. Yeah. And so she tasted them and, and
decided, okay, we're going to get these back there. Warren's.
Warren's story is a little bit different,
but what is this character that you think you've

(29:25):
got a Mike Girgich who's. Who's had some training, where he grew up,
came to America. I love this. Love how you. The picture you painted of
him landing in St. Helena and, you know, like, almost leaving
his. Not even nowhere to sleep that night and
figuring out something, you know, just by the seat of his pants with his
$32 sewn in his shoe. Mr.

(29:48):
Barrett had funds. He had investors. He was an attorney.
He was a sharp guy. It's a whole different program just to put on
the table. His other son, Beau,
is my brother's class at Palos Verdes High School.
And I threatened his secretary that if he didn't speak with me on

(30:08):
the show soon, I would publish his high school photograph.
So. And then I surfed with the younger son, Kevin, who's not in
the movie or not in the part of the Winery. We were very young then,
but that relationship goes really far back. But,
you know, Warren came here to America or to California, looking for

(30:29):
something else, a break from his lifestyle,
and there weren't. I can't remember in your
book, if you talk about UC Davis having an enology school then, was it something
you could do then, or was he not even around? No, they didn't even have
anything like that in those days. It was all bootstrap stuff. Yes.
Yeah. There were only two or three people,

(30:52):
only half a dozen or so people
making wine in those days. I mean, I suppose why
they bounced around, too. Pardon me? I suppose why they bounced around a little bit
too, where Mike Girgich had worked at all those places and
Warren's experience doing the same. Because
this is what fascinates about the wine business. And I don't know about you, but

(31:14):
my sort of. This is my 30th year of tasting wines.
I've calculated somewhere around 100,000, some ridiculous number
with a totally different approach. I mean, my approach is, like, based on value, but
it fascinates me to see people like that.
They didn't go to chemistry school, they didn't go to biology, they didn't study

(31:37):
biology, they didn't study farming. They
had a passion and a whim and an idea. Maybe
not unlike yours. That's the key. That's the key to the whole story.
They had the passion for it
to. Just say, whatever my headwinds are going to
be, I'm going to survive them. Yeah. Yeah.

(32:00):
And so what is it to you, then, that wine does that? Because
it's bitten me now, and it took. I didn't have it 30 years ago. I
was just business for me, and I. My career is, you know, not as
elaborate as most, but it's. It's interesting. But I. It
took, I'm going to say, maybe the last five years, so
25 years of tasting wines where I said, you know, it took a little while

(32:23):
for the aha moment, whatever you want to call it. The. The moment. I
say, like the ratatouille moment, where the food critic tastes that ratatouille for the first
time. They remind him of his mother's cooking. What was it
about George Tabor's. Was it the tasting itself?
That's where you decide, wow, this is really a fascinating thing.
Or is it prior to that? No, because, you know,

(32:46):
again, I was. I was a
reporter for Time magazine in those days,
and, you know, you had to do all sorts of stories.
You know, stories about, you know, this. This
Subject or that subject or this. This new
thing. This old thing, whatever it is. And so,

(33:08):
you know, this. The tasting of the
Paris tasting was, you know, it would have been
very easy for me not to have gone that day
because nobody else was there. And so some young
French girl walks by, bumps you on the Champs Elysees, and she's like, let's have
a drink, and you're done. You're not going to go to the town.

(33:33):
But you had. You had to submit the idea first, is that correct?
I had to tell Time magazine, hey, there
was this event that's going to be next week
in Paris, and I think it's
an interesting story. You know,

(33:54):
some of the people are here. But then go
to it, taste. Taste it and see what happens.
And, you know, chances are the California wines are not going to do very
well. But that's okay. But, you know, just. We'll just see what happens. See
what happens. So. But so were you. You were. I know that you were
going to Stephen's class, I think, but did you really, like,

(34:16):
have this ethereal experience with wine
yet? Did you really realize this is not just an alcoholic
beverage? It actually is a representative, like Mike Salachi of
Opus One says, it represents a time and a place
for that bottle of wine. Had that happened yet? Or he just still was
still in Paris enjoying cassoulet and wine? Well,

(34:39):
I was. You know, I had been working in
France at that point for well over a year,
maybe even up to two years. Check on that.
Exactly. For. But it was, you know, I've been there. I've.
I spoke very good French, so I could get around, you
know, get the stories, get all the stories, have the interesting

(35:02):
things, and this was just another different story that day.
It's just something else. And we even
covered a whole part of the world up in those days.
You know, we went down to the
other parts of France to do other stories. And so,
you know, it would have been a very easy thing for

(35:26):
me to skip the story and go off
and pick up something else. Fortunately, it didn't happen. I went.
The one in Paris.
It doesn't. That's on. That's. That's. There's luck. Damn
luck.

(35:47):
I'm a firm believer in luck is a preparation,
means opportunity. And, you know, the things that she. That
what you were able to produce, maybe the fact that a
young French woman didn't bump you on the Champs Jose and you went off with
her, is luck. But, you know, you being there
at the time, this is happening and thinking maybe this is a story. It all

(36:08):
comes just from experience and being part of the program. Tell
me about the. The other parts of France at that time, the wine districts. You've
got the south of France, you get the Languedoc, you've got Burgundy, of course, which
is obviously very famous at the time. But the Chateauneuf du Pape, the Rhone
area, were those considered
elegant places for wine, places for wine that people would study

(36:31):
or be interested in knowing? Oh, yes. So, you know, the great
wines of France, you know, no matter where they were. But
the thing was that since in
Paris it was easier to get around the stories and,
you know, pick up stories and pick up, decide this is the

(36:52):
one that's going to be. And that's what would happen that day. Was
it like I could have gone to, you know, some
stories in Belgium, you know, around there, any place
in France. But, you know, I decided to
pick out and propose to
Time. And that's say, you know, you know,

(37:14):
I didn't predict the story to
the Time editors. I just said, hey,
something's going to be happening next week. I think it might be
interesting. So I'm going to go ahead and take a story, take
a picture that day and see what
happens. How many other George Taylors were there in France

(37:36):
at the time for Time magazine in Paris?
Well, there were a total of all of the
staff at Time would have been three or four
main reporters. So that's where
it's not luck, George. You had an interest in something and

(37:57):
you saw the opportunity and it happened. That's incredible. So
I'm going to read you a paragraph from
Ernest Hemingway's book, and I want to talk about
the societal value of wine in general. So he writes this.
As I ate the oysters with the strong taste of the sea and

(38:19):
their faint metallic taste that the cold wine washed away,
leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture. And as I
drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with crisp taste of
the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be
happy and to make plans. And that last sentence for
me is a huge sentence for what I

(38:41):
tell my customers, what I try to
instill the value of a good glass of wine
because it loses the empty feeling. And
you want to make plans, so to speak. And you don't do that with beer,
you don't do it with gin, you don't do it with bourbon, but you do
it with wine. And to me, that

(39:04):
ethereal value is what makes
this beverage this ancient beverage, right? I mean,
they Found an intact Armenian, you know, I'm Armenian, so
they, we know these things, but they found this 6,000 year old winery,
you know, buried in the dirt with shoes and amphora. Right.
So, so somewhere in the history of man, somebody fermented a

(39:27):
grape or the grape fermented on its own and they bit into it. And this
is, this was pretty good stuff, right? So,
so it seems to me the lifestyle, the French
lifestyle. And I talked about this with, with
Rex Pickett, the guy that wrote Sideways
the French paradox, which was, you know, they've been drinking wine forever

(39:50):
and they, they're thinner than Americans, they live longer than Americans,
and they take life slower than Americans. Was that something that, that intrigued
you with, with being in Paris and that's slow food
and a good glass of wine? Oh, absolutely. Because,
you know, France was the, was
the high point of everything that you could

(40:13):
do in Europe at that point.
I could have gone to Germany or
Belgium or other places, but if you wanted to go to
a really great country with great wines, great
politics, great stories, go to Paris.

(40:33):
That's what I wanted to do, was to go to Paris.
Would you, would you tell young journalists or young
enthusiasts for wine even, hey, you know,
go, go to Paris, learn another culture, learn another language. Had
you, like you said, you speak, you spoke very good French, which I study French
now, and it's a tough language, right? Did you know French before you got there?

(40:57):
I had studied in college,
so they had two years of, to college,
but, but that would, that didn't, that's when. You get there, you
realize you didn't learn anything, right? Yeah. So much
different now. But would you make that recommendation if somebody came to you today, a
journalist or a young college student that just got out of college, like, what do

(41:19):
you want to do? Like I did yesterday with this young lady. She's, I want
to learn about wine. I'm like, well, you know, you can read all the books
you want, but until you sit down and taste it with people and learn a
culture around it, it's going to be difficult to understand it.
I totally agree with you. You know, you, you've got to experience that.
You gotta see what it was. It's all about, you know,

(41:39):
what, you know, what, what, what it is and that. And
because the French would love to talk to you about
wine, they will not ever, you know,
throw you out saying, you know, hey, you know about wine. Yeah,
right? They love their wine. They love their wine. They
will help you love wine as well. It's

(42:02):
interesting because you said when we use the word passion between the
California winemakers at the time of the 70s.
And maybe my renaissance of understanding this
is coming about from doing these conversations. I've been doing
videos with winemakers for probably 10 years now, and

(42:22):
the formula starts to come around. The formula is
not the chemistry like we talked about earlier.
You can go to school to learn the chemistry, but these guys are making wines
that today are still fantastic wines without the chemistry. It
was the value of the bootstrap education.
But one thing for sure that I get out of winemakers from all over the

(42:45):
world, whether it's Croatia or Italy or France, is
there's a deep rooted,
impassioned almost now at this point, doesn't even work. It's just a love. They
love the wine that they're working with. It's so
interesting to me that that is part of. All right, so we
win. We won. We won this thing. And it's like, what? And it gets printed

(43:07):
in the Time magazine. It's got a little blurb. We don't even know who George
Tabor is yet. And it kind of starts to snowball
around that this thing won. And my dad wrote about it,
I think, in August of. I think it was in the August
newsletter of 1976.
When did it have the sort of sales. Let's talk business. When

(43:29):
did it have the sales pull through? When it's like, oh, my God, we're going
to run out of Chateau 73 Montalana Shard. We're going to run out of the
Stag's Leap Cab. When did that happen?
As soon as the story got into the paper
the following week. As soon as Americans saw
what was happening, then they started rushing all

(43:51):
around the country to see, hey, you have these. You
have these wines. Can we buy these wines? Where can we buy these wines? Hey,
these wines are supposed to be really great. You got to tell me, where can
I get them? The big retailer back then was
in New York, Ackerman, Marilyn Ackerman, and one of the

(44:13):
big retailers back then. Were the wines even distributed on
the east coast by then? Do you. Do you know if you could get. Very,
very few, who would have. Who would have done that? Right? There wasn't
market for it. Yeah, who cared?
So. So now vintage 74. I can't remember the 74
Chateau Montele, because we had it. I'm sure we had it.

(44:35):
Mr. Mr. Barrett used to come to my dad's store all the time, and he's
like, one day he comes to my dad's story. He goes, hey, Paul. He goes,
my dad's name was Paul also. He says, can you help me out? I go,
everybody in Palos Verdes wants to, you know, all the socialites, right? They all
want to have me. They all
want me to donate wines. So

(44:56):
can you just put them in the store so I can just send them to
your place? They're like, sure, I'll put them in. So we had the
Riesling, and we had the Chardonnay, and we had whatever else they were making at
the time, two years before the tasting.
But there at that time, too, in Palos Verdes, we
had God, who was the other family

(45:19):
that started in that big winery. My dad used to feel like he
was outclassed, like this was now this elite.
My mind right now escapes me. But
as a young guy stocking the shelves, I don't remember a surge. I don't remember
those things. I was too young. I do know that Warren stayed at our

(45:41):
house, and this was before the tasting. My dad bought his
Riesling because he couldn't afford the cab at the time.
And I was just looking at. On my office, I have the old
flip boards that whenever I was a kid. When I was a kid, the cash
register and somebody bought a bottle of wine, we didn't price them on the
bottle. You would come and put it on the counter, and then you would flip

(46:02):
through this sheet that my dad had. And so I have some on my desk.
And we have all these things. We have, you know, we have Burgess, and we
had Stone Creek or Stone Valley. We had
Montelena, we had Stag's Leap, and
they were like $2.50 for the whites.

(46:23):
So. And the reds were like, what, four or five bucks, I think, or six
bucks was like a big, expensive cabernet at the time.
So do you think then
it's almost impossible today to go to Napa and
buy a land and expect to make any money? And

(46:43):
it's almost that these iconic brands that have been around forever, Burgess
and Stag's Leap and Chateau Montelana, if they haven't sold to corporate America
yet, that. That have the land paid
off, and now they're getting premium money for the wines because
of the history. Did you get a piece of that, George? Did anybody
thank you by. Not one bit.

(47:07):
You know, the
winemakers at that point, you know,
they didn't really. You know, they had a tough
time selling wine. And then
until the Time magazine story came out.
Soon as the Time magazine story came out, people could come

(47:29):
rushing out, especially out of New York, and The, you know, the big
capital cities. And then they just said, you know,
hey, do you have any of this California wine from
Montelena? I don't know what the name of it is, but something like that.
Buy me a case of that. No. And so then the
rush. Then the rush had to happen. Then the rush happened, and it was.

(47:53):
To Napa and crazy. And, you know,
Napa was never the same again. And it's now it's different again.
We sort of prefer Sonoma just to the
extent that it's less commercial. Now, Paso Robles being, you
know, coming onto the map, is still a cowboy town. And
Napa's gotten, you know, pretty commercial. And I was

(48:16):
interviewed by the Napa Valley Register recently and the wine gal, and it was not
an interview about me. I thought it was be about my business and what we've
done all these years. But it was about how can we help these wineries compete
now because it's so expensive to produce wine in Napa
that you have to sell it for $100 a bottle or more. And the
marketplace for those things isn't that big. The iconic

(48:37):
brands like KMAS and Silver Oak, they're getting it. But if you're a
boutique guy and you have to charge 150 bucks a bottle and nobody knows who
you are, it's a tough animal. Oh, yeah. Really
tough animal. Now, I can tell you, George, that Covid has
been amazing for my business. Anybody that's direct to the
consumer in America that had all the pieces in place,

(49:00):
I'm waiting for Covid 20, because it may be politically incorrect to say,
but we're selling a ton of wine right now.
All right, well, listen, you know, we could talk, and I hope we can do
it again. But I want to close with the next 10 minutes or so about
the book on cork, because when I looked you up to talk
about some of the things, and I saw this book, Le

(49:21):
Bush in French. Right. La Bouche.
What compelled somebody. Yeah, there's a copy.
What would compel somebody to write a book on corkscrew?
Well, you know, after the, you know, after the Paris tasting,
you know, I could. Could write it, you know, of any book that I

(49:44):
wanted to. Yeah, right. The publishers suddenly get
discovered me. Yeah. And so, you know, these.
These. These things turned out to be just outstanding
subjects that. That they could
learn a lot from more about winery. As you know,

(50:07):
I wanted to learn about all the great wines of the world.
And that's how I. That's how it happened. So you
dispelled like the first few pages, which I haven't finished the book all the
way, but you completely ruined my
social club. You know, I give speeches at a Rotary club and Kiwanis, they all
buy wine. Totally blew my rap because

(50:29):
I have a piece of cork from my uncle
Art, who passed away last year, two years ago, had
participated with Coca Cola in 1970,
1985, in assembling a piece of synthetic
cork to a bar cap to make a bar cap closure for Taylor Sellers.
So this is way before the idea of a foam

(50:52):
synthetic cork was being used in St. Francis or barefoot Cellars or whatever is
using it, you know, in the early 90s. And
you said in the book that Dom Perignon did not invent the
cork. And that's. That's one of my trivia questions, you know,
who invented the cork for wine as well? Don Perignon, the blind monk. And they.
And they also. I think you said, there's no. He wasn't even blind. Maybe he

(51:14):
wasn't. I could see. And so now I have to change all my trivia
questions because of book. But this is
a. It's a fascinating story, and I think it's important for people to understand because
it is a question that I get. Probably one of the most prolific questions I
get is, you know, what's the screw cap? You know, what's the point of it?
Why is. Is it better or worse? Is that a clerk? And. And so.

(51:35):
But you just thought it was an interesting subject to peel back
to, have people understand, because you really dug deep into it.
Yeah, because it's, you know, it's. It is
a difficult subject. There's no question. It's not an
easy subject to make
these wines and then sell them to

(51:58):
other places. And so I thought it was really
important to learn about what
the great wines of the world were made from and how the
Californian wines could. Could go come in
with them. Yeah. You did it. You know, I forgot that part, too. You've got
some amazing depth in New Zealand here.

(52:23):
I wanted to. I just lost a train of thought, but it was
these. The screw cap, which is when I was stocking the shelf in
1976, you know, 1975, and it was
Gallo Rhine wine and red Burgundy and that
stuff, Chablis, or my uncle would call it Shablis,

(52:46):
you know, it always connotated a negative thing.
And the general public
thinks the cork is this romantic thing, which is true.
And I just did a whole special email on canned
wines, you know, that I tasted probably, I don't know, maybe 75 canned wines.
I found five really good wines. I found a Russian Reverend Pinot and a

(53:09):
250ml. I found a Lodi Cab
vintage in a 187 that was very good. You pour it in a glass, people
have a hard time even thinking it's canned.
But I have to tell you
in a whim, it was a mistake. Applied to
study under the MW program. Now I'm 61. It's probably not a great time to

(53:32):
start, but I decided I would try. And one
of the questions that I got for the application was,
what's happening with the marketing of wine and the value
of the closure and should we keep up with the
times, like cans or tetra packs or those kinds of things?
And I wrote this, actually the best part of my application as far as they

(53:55):
are concerned, that they liked because I had a.
I had a kid ask me just weeks before to help them
understand the packaging of a CBD drink. The
CBD oil, the stuff that they harvest from marijuana, that
is not the hallucinogenic part or the narcotic part. It's
supposed to make you feel better, like aspirin. He was making a drink out

(54:18):
of it and he was asking me, Mr. Callan, Karen, what do you think I
should do with this? Should I put it in a cork? We want the elegance
of a cork. Pull the cork out of the bottle and make the sound. And
I wrote this in the application to the Master of Wine. They liked this because
it was a contemporary application of a
closure. But the punchline was. I asked the kid,

(54:38):
I go, what does it taste like? He goes, tastes like crap.
So how was this book received by
people? Was it. The book has
done very well, you. Know.
Because Americans are still learning about wine

(54:59):
and, you know, so. So the book is, is. Is part of,
Of. Of the. Their education.
It's a. It's one of the most. And I couldn't believe that it had been
done, but it was a very granular look at what.
What was happening. I want to tell you a quick story and we'll get you
off because I don't have a hard stop. But when my uncle Art was working

(55:20):
with Coca Cola on this Taylor Sellers cork and his
job, he was an MIT master's mechanical engineer. So his job was to take the
synthetic cork, the little bar top size, and glue it to the bar
cap. And he had to make the machine that would do that oriented and have
all that stuff. In the meantime, the company in Ontario, I forgot the name of
it now, was using synthetic corks and

(55:41):
it was. St. Francis was one of the few wineries that was using it in
California. I think Barefoot Sellers was using it. And I said, let's
go out, Unc, and we'll go see this machine. So we go to the machine,
we climb around. I position myself as bottling some wine. And he was my
engineer, and we had overalls on. And they take us back into the warehouse, and
there's the machine making corks. And we get in the car. This is how brilliant

(56:03):
the guy was. He says, it'll never work. I go, why not? He goes, because
the machine they're using is for Italian shoe soles.
And he goes, the temperature of the foam as it gets to the outer mold
is going to be different than the inner mold, and they're going to have inconsistent
corks. And then he explained to me why the cell size would be
different. And so we got back to the house, and we cut the corks in

(56:23):
half. And he was exactly right. So I called Mike
Houlihan, and Barefoot and I called the St. Francis winemaker. I forgot his name at
the time. I go, how's it going? He goes, well, it's going okay. But every
now and then, the cork bends and doesn't go in the bottle. And it was
exactly the symptom that Art was telling us about, which was the cell structure
of the cork. So I want to thank

(56:44):
you for this time, George. I know you have to get off, and I want
to. I want to reserve the right to come out and see
you and do this live and peel it back a little bit more
or potentially do it again on Zoom Calls. But it's been a fascinating conversation,
and I. And we appreciate what you brought to the industry. I
can tell you that I thank you because my career has been based on

(57:06):
the fact that you did this. Well, I was lucky.
Well, I don't know. I could have gone, you know, that day
to another story, and, you know,
California wines probably would become known, you know, five or ten years
later. But. But, you know, it was lucky that. That day in
Paris and I was. There, somebody put you there at the right time,

(57:28):
at the right place for the right story to the world. And that's the
part that really is really special for what you've done. So thanks again for
the time. Thank you. I'll send you a link to this when it gets posted,
and I hope I can come see in Rhode island or Vero Beach. Maybe that'll
be better. Okay. Get to
California. Yeah, that too. We'll be here. But I know Stephen's coming.

(57:50):
I can't remember if it's October or November, but he'll be in Napa. And
if you're available, join us up there. Yeah. Okay, great.
Thank you. Good to talk to you. Thank you.