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A tasting called "Judgement of London" will take place on 20 May at the London Wine Fair. It is planned as a new edition and homage to the legendary "Judgement of Paris", in which wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy were judged blind against Californians, who were hardly known at the time, in 1976. To the surprise of the tasters and experts, the Californians won. The tasting, organised by wine merchant and journalist Steven Spurrier, who died in 2021, was the first to show the potential of Californian wines in comparison to their famous European counterparts and is considered a turning point in American wine history. The tasting and its backstory were made into a film in 2008 by Hollywood director Randall Miller under the title "Bottle Shock".
The Judgement of London will include a wider selection of iconic wines from Europe and around the world than back then to reflect the diversity of today's wine market. The tasting flights will be compiled by Master Sommelier Ronan Sayburn, CEO of the Court of Master Sommeliers, and Sarah Abbott MW according to grape variety, style and texture. The wines are tasted in pairs by 20 judges under test conditions, one from Europe and one from the rest of the world. The selected producers have been asked to submit a vintage that is within the optimum drinking window of five to 15 years. Eight pairs of white wines will be tasted in the morning and eight pairs of red wines in the afternoon. The wines are rated on a scale of one to ten, with half points allowed.
Jancis Robinson MW, who is one of the judges, describes the event as "a fitting tribute to Steven Spurrier. We will celebrate the progress that has been made since his Judgement of Paris in 1976". Sarah Abbott MW said: "The world of wine is rightly moving away from 'Old World versus New World', but Steven Spurrier's teaching - that great wine comes from all over the world - is as relevant and relevant now as it was almost 50 years ago when this iconoclastic tasting took place."
(al / source: harpers.co.uk)