The Judgement of Paris

On 24 May 1976, Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant held a competition in Paris. It was a blind wine tasting. It set the best wines of France against some wines that Spurrier had recently gotten from California.

Up to this point it was common knowledge that France's wines were the best. In fact Spurrier had a hard time getting any members of the press to attend the tasting because it was obviously not going to be news worthy. He wasn't expecting it to be a real competition either, he was just trying to build some publicity for his business. He didn't even sell any California wines.

The judging panel was a who's who of refined pallets. It wasn't news, but it was free wine. The blind wine tasting went ahead as planned, but as you might have guessed it didn't go as expected.

The California wines won all categories. It shook the wine world. No one had imagined leading up to this that France could be beat.

But France lost.

When I say it shook the wine world it really did. As a result the world wide wine industry exploded. Vineyards opened up all over. The idea that anyone could, without French soil, produce world class wines opened the industry up. Additionally, the French became a lot more open to talking to foriegn wine makers. So as a result both the French and California wines got better because of the sharing of ideas.

What changed?

Nothing.

Nothing, but the realization that good wine COULD be made. No new processes were developed. No new resources were discovered. Just the knowledge that it could be done.

Just knowing that it can be done is enough. Often though, we "know" things without actually KNOWING them.

What would you do if you realized it could be done?