The Judgement of Paris: A Review

           In the distant past, when I was teaching English to foreigners, a student told me that he didn’t believe in luck. He didn’t believe in evolution either, but that’s beside the point. I’d never heard of The Judgement of Paris wine tasting at the time, but I think it suggests that he was wrong, and that luck plays a huge role in our lives.

          I suppose readers of The Wine Merchant know the story: Steven Spurrier organised a face-off in Paris between wines from California and Bordeaux and Burgundy in 1976, and the Americans won. It has been presented as a key moment in the recent history of wine, when the French were knocked off their pedestal.

          The role played by luck is very clear if you read a new book on the subject published by Académie du Vin Library, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the event. An American reporter called George Taber from Time magazine was present at the tasting, and it was his article which set the ball rolling. As Spurrier himself notes in an excerpt from his autobiography which is reprinted here, Taber only accepted the invitation to attend ‘with the caveat that if something else cropped up, he wouldn’t be able to make it.’ ‘Had George not been present to witness the tasting and to report the story’, Spurrier continues, ‘our little adventure would probably have sunk without trace.’

          The book starts well, with a chapter about Paris in the 1970s. There are splendidly evocative pictures of the city as it was, including one which reminds you just how awful the Centre Pompidou looks. There’s also the odd amusing piece of commentary: ‘Pavement café society was alive and well in 1970s Paris, as was the notoriously aloof attitude of the waiters.’ I haven’t been to Paris in a few years, but that still held true on my last visit, and I speak French.

          The account of the lead-up to the tasting and the event itself is very entertaining. I learned a few facts I was unaware of. For one, the competitive element was sprung on the French judges, who were not aware that they would be comparing American and French wines. ‘Fortunately, they accepted’, Spurrier observes. Again, luck. Second, I didn’t know that the line-up of red Bordeaux wines was really stellar: Mouton-Rothschild, Haut-Brion, Montrose and Léoville las Cases. I knew which wines had won, but that was it.

          The book struggles to maintain these heights. There’s a chapter featuring tasting notes of the wines sampled at Spurrier’s event, along with descriptions of later vintages of the same wines. It’s the sort of thing which will only appeal to those who’ve tried them. A lot of space is allotted to people within the industry pontificating about the significance of the event. Mostly, it’s boilerplate, with a lot of repetition.

          A couple of enjoyable chapters come towards the end. A rather humorous piece written by Raymond Blake concerns the challenges of blind tasting, while another lists ‘Eight Events That Shook The Wine World’. Needless to say, the Judgement of Paris makes the list.  

          The Judgement of Paris – a controversial term in some quarters, I discovered – occurred half a century ago. I think it’s time the world of wine moved on. As for the book, it’s hard to see what the target market is. It looks great, but it’s eye-wateringly expensive. Perhaps it will be snapped up by those who are lucky enough to consider Ridge’s Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon a weekday wine. 

Published in The Wine Merchant, May 2026

Tasting Victory: A Review

           A very long time ago, one of England’s greatest cricketers was a man called C.B. Fry. He was astonishingly talented. In addition to playing cricket for England, he was also a professional footballer and the holder of the world long-jump record. Bizarrely enough, he was even offered the chance to be King of Albania at one point. Later in his life he wrote an autobiography called Life Worth Living.

        I thought of C.B. Fry, who I imagine is long-forgotten even by most cricket fans, while I was reading Tasting Victory by Gérard Basset. It’s a pretty good title, but I think Basset should have purloined the name of Fry’s book for his own autobiography. For although Basset died an early death, he accomplished an awful lot: he was a Master Sommelier, a Master of Wine, the winner of innumerable sommelier titles, including Best Sommelier in the World, and the co-founder of the Hotel du Vin group. It was a life worth living.

        As someone who writes about travel, I enjoyed the early chapters in which he describes his upbringing in Saint-Étienne (“nothing special about the place”) and “beautiful” Aix-en-Provence. He paints a vivid picture of France at the time. I was surprised to learn that “in the late sixties and early seventies, sport in France was not taken that seriously”, although his father viewed cyclists in the Tour de France as “superheroes with supernatural powers”. It was clearly a more innocent time. Travel itself was evidently a more pleasurable and relaxed affair too. Returning to France after his first visit to England, Basset recounts that “the Marseille customs officer did not even bother to check anyone”.

        There are many amusing anecdotes in Basset’s story. He recalls being “mystified” by an “aloof” diner in Hampshire who had been very genial the previous time he had served him. The reason eventually dawned on Basset: “I realised the woman he was dining with was not the same one he had been with three weeks ago. This lady, no doubt, was his wife.” Sir Edward Heath, at the time a former prime minister, would visit the same restaurant and have whisky as an apéritif before moving on to wine. Not good for the palate, perhaps, but worthy of respect.

        Best of all is the tale of the high-rolling bankers who descended on the place and proceeded to drink Dom Pérignon, Grand Cru Chablis, Château Lafite, Château Latour and Château d’Yquem. They wanted to finish the night with some Krug, but Basset told them it was sadly impossible as it was past midnight and they were not staying in the hotel. One of the bankers simply paid for a room, ‘didn’t bother to take the key’, and they kept on drinking. The bankers eventually departed, after settling up and leaving “a generous tip”. Basset writes that he “felt very proud…for having played my part in such a successful arrangement.”

Basset had an appealingly old school mindset. He was competitive and worked hard to achieve success. When describing difficult periods, he does so in a matter-of-fact way. Although he had a rough childhood, there’s no suggestion that he was plagued by mental health troubles as a consequence. When he was diagnosed with cancer, he was phlegmatic: “To my surprise I did not panic or have a meltdown. I was sixty years old and I thought, ‘Well, if my time is up, then so be it.’”

There are many useful lessons for life in Basset’s book. Readers of this publication will not be surprised by his remark that “there was an assumption that being French made me a wine expert.” Many of his valid observations are not related to wine, though. He encountered troubles in business towards the end of his life, leading to this comment: “It turned out that just as we had no experience with con men, so we had no real experience with lawyers either – but we were about to get it.” Words for the ages.

I liked Tasting Victory a lot. It’s short and very readable, and Basset comes across well. He was a hard-working man who made the most of his abilities and opportunities and had considerable success. In words of which C.B. Fry would have approved, he had this to say about his life: “I have had a good innings.”

Published in The Wine Merchant, April 2026.

Pressing Matters: A Review

            Many books about wine have a problem: they're expensive. A case in point is a recent book about Beaujolais. You might think that as a wine lover and former resident of Japan, the last redoubt of Beaujolais Nouveau, I was part of the target market for this work. Was I willing to spend £35 on it, though? No, I was not. 

     At £20, Alan Ramey’s Pressing Matters is therefore a relative bargain. The writer covers eight issues of importance, or at least matters of interest, within the wine world.

Ramey is American, and the co-owner of Ramey Wine Cellars in California. He writes in an academic style, and is not afraid of using footnotes, which is to be respected. He's also to be commended for not using annoying buzzwords like ‘intentionality’ and ‘wellness’.

        The significance of some of the subjects Ramey addresses is debatable. For instance, he spends a lot of time on the issue of terroir, outlining arguments about whether the climate or the soil is more important. Does it matter, though? Perhaps to vine growers, but to the average wine enthusiast I don’t think it’s worth spending much time on.

        The best part of the book is a thought-provoking chapter on the issue of taste, and the extent to which it’s possible to determine the quality of a wine in an objective fashion. This may seem esoteric, but it should matter to drinkers as many are willing to buy based on a recommendation or a score.

Ramey notes that balance is typically accepted as a sign of quality, but points out that some grapes which have lofty reputations give unbalanced wines. Riesling, for example, often has off-the-scale acidity. Length and intensity are dubious indicators of quality too, according to Ramey, as the wine just might not taste good.

        These means of judging a wine will be familiar to anyone who’s studied for the WSET Diploma. What about complexity? Ramey writes that it's often seen as part of quality because the opposite - something 'monolithic' - 'is decidedly not good'. I'm not convinced, though. Red Rioja Reservas and Gran Reservas are wonderful, in my opinion, because they have a ton of oak. For what it’s worth, I think length is the key to quality, as long as the wine tastes good, of course.

        The chapters on organics, biodynamics and natural wine are useful, as the topics are fashionable. Still, these sections, like the book in general, would be more enjoyable if the reader got to the bottom of what Ramey believes. I wanted to know if he feels that the whole idea of a natural wine is flimflam, or if he thinks biodynamics is hokum. His goal was clearly to make the reader think, but the end result is like a PhD thesis in which the candidate never reaches a conclusion.

That said, Pressing Matters does have another thing going for it: it’s short. Books about wine have taken the same path as Hollywood films in recent times: the longer, the better, apparently. Many could do with having a hundred pages lopped off. Perhaps then they would be cheaper.

 Published in The Wine Merchant, March 2026. 

The Emperor of Wine

 

        Edinburgh Central Library is in the heart of the city’s Old Town, a tourist mecca. A stone’s throw from the entrance, visitors will see a mass of scaffolding, behind which a hotel has been hidden for years. It is an embarrassment to this once handsome capital city, but nobody seems to want to do anything about it.

        I went to the Central Library not to see this eyesore, but to read The Wines of the Rhône Valley and Provence, by Robert M. Parker, Jr., the ‘Emperor of Wine’. The book was published a long time ago, in 1987, and is for reference only. It took me back to my student days, when I whiled away hours in that library, reading texts which were far less interesting.

        It may legitimately be asked why I bothered. Well, I wanted something to write about and I’m very keen on wines from the Rhône Valley. I was curious to discover what this legendary wine critic had to say about one of my favourite regions.

        I quickly discovered that Robert Parker was a really excellent writer. I don’t think I’d ever read that about him. He is still famous for having a profound influence on wine styles before the Millennium, owing to his preference for very ripe, full-bodied wines, but his talents as a writer seem to have been forgotten.  

        I found myself laughing at his turn of phrase in that silent room around the corner from Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. Gigondas ‘seems to have as many dogs and cats as human inhabitants’, he wrote. Now of course a famous appellation, ‘Gigondas does not have a distinguished history’. Hence the fact that ‘all the growers and négociants seem to relish’ its previous incarnation as a ‘booster wine’ for red Burgundy.

        He was not a fan of the wine villages in the département of the Drôme in the southern Rhône, which he described as ‘one-horse towns’. As for Vinsobres, which is these days considered a source of some excellent red wines, its name ‘seems a contradiction in itself (“sober wine”)’. The eastern side of the river in the southern Rhône, an area of ‘sun-scorched, lazy hill towns’ and ‘spectacular vistas’, was ‘studded with…red-faced vignerons offering a free taste of their wines’.

        For someone with such a famous palate, I found some of Parker’s comments about grapes and wines puzzling. The white grape Bourboulenc, he wrote, ‘offers plenty of body’. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that. On the contrary, I thought it was more famous for having acidity, making it a rarity in the southern Rhône. I’d always believed that Grenache Blanc, another white grape, was rather neutral. ‘Deeply fruity’ was Parker’s assessment, however. As for the rosés of Gigondas, these were ‘light, vibrant, fresh, underrated’, in his view. Admittedly, my tasting experience is limited, but the ones I tried were flabby and alcoholic.

        Parker’s tasting notes were surprising, to say the least. One of the aromas of the white grape Roussanne was ‘coffee’, in his estimation. I did a double-take when I read that. Likewise, I raised my eyebrows when I saw that one of the ‘telltale aromas’ of the red grape Mourvèdre was ‘tree bark’. His assertion that the ‘best’ examples of Grenache had an aroma of ‘roasted peanuts’ also had me scratching my head. Either I haven’t tasted enough or Robert Parker had an eccentric palate.

        I didn’t read all of it, but I enjoyed Robert Parker’s book very much. I’d say that he was a far more gifted and entertaining writer than the vast majority of people writing about wine now. Nor was he afraid of acknowledging his limitations. ‘Frankly, I have no idea what this grape tastes like’, he wrote of Picpoul. Now that’s hard to imagine.

How Long Can You Leave Lehmann?

 

          I like Australian wines a lot, which I believe makes me unfashionable. That doesn’t bother me in the least. In my youth, I guzzled Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cabernet Sauvignon with abandon. When I first lived in Tokyo, I regularly drank Yellow Tail Shiraz, with Japanese beer serving as a pleasant aperitif before the main event. Eventually I moved on to the really good stuff.

          One such wine was the Peter Lehmann Mentor Cabernet Sauvignon 2014, from the Barossa Valley. I hoovered up stock of it when I worked at Majestic Wine. I remember opening one of my last bottles the first time I had Covid. I couldn’t really taste it, and it could be argued that I squandered a fine bottle of wine, but it cheered me up enormously.

          I told Brett Schutz, the senior winemaker at Peter Lehmann Wines, about my enthusiasm for the 2014 Mentor when I had the good fortune to taste with him recently. This happy turn of events was occasioned by Peter Lehmann switching importer, from Liberty to Boutinot.

          Like the other wines in the Peter Lehmann Masters Collection, the Mentor Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 matured for five years before release, Well, almost. I sampled it in September, so you work that out. The Cabernet fruit comes mostly from the north of the Barossa Valley and the wine had more of a menthol, eucalyptus tinge than I remembered in the 2014. (I was told that, contrary to my assumptions, the eucalyptus flavour is more common in the Barossa Valley than in Coonawarra.)

          I asked Brett Schutz if eight years after the vintage was the ideal time to drink the Mentor, for I had gone through Majestic’s stock of the 2014 like a wrecking ball in 2022, and it was hard to believe it could have improved beyond that point in time. He said that he thought the wine would have been even better a couple of years later. I made a solemn vow to refrain from drinking the 2021 until the 2030s. Given that I’ve never succeeded in holding on to a bottle for longer than 18 months, however, it’s reasonable to doubt my resolve.

          There are two whites in the Masters Collection, the Wigan Riesling and the Margaret Semillon. Apparently, Semillon was a big seller for Peter Lehmann a few decades ago, before it was eclipsed by the ‘Savalanche’ from New Zealand. The Margaret Semillon 2017 is ‘still quite tight’, in the words of Brett Schutz. It does indeed have an awful lot of acidity. I asked when it would hit its sweet spot, and the answer was 15 to 20 years after the harvest, or ‘crush’, as I think they say in Australia. The wine ‘requires significant time (and patience)’, or so I read on the Peter Lehmann website. No kidding.

          The Wigan Riesling I sampled was from 2018, a high acid vintage. The fruit was grown in the Eden Valley, which is next to the Barossa Valley and a prime source of Riesling. According to Brett Schutz, the Wigan reaches its peak about ten years after the harvest. He said that it doesn’t retain its structure as well as the Semillon, so it isn’t as long-lived.

          ‘Is the writing on the wall for Australian Shiraz?’ asked The Drinks Business in January. If so, it’s further proof that our civilisation is in a downward spiral. The Peter Lehmann Stonewell Shiraz is the winery’s flagship. The average age of the vines used for the wine is around fifty years, and some of the fruit is from vines planted in 1893. The ageing potential of the wine is considerable: Brett Schutz said the 2010 and 2012 still need time. It was very interesting tasting the 2018 alongside the Masters Collection Eight Songs Shiraz 2021, for I detected a significant difference in tannins. The tannins from the Stonewell were far more evident on my front teeth, despite it being three years older. Even so, the Eight Songs Shiraz should last for 20 years.

          I went to the Barossa Valley once, on a minibus tour. We visited four wineries, none of which I remember. One of them may have been Peter Lehmann, but maybe not. My main recollection is not of the estates, but of my fellow tourists: they were all Brits. I suppose Australian wine was a lot more trendy back in the day.

Published in The Wine Merchant, January 2026.

Carnuntum

 

The vineyard of Rosenberg was almost silent when I visited at the end of July. I could hear cicadas croaking and the soughing of the wind, but that was about it. Rows of vines stretched down the gentle green slope towards the small town of Göttlesbrunn, beyond which the ground rose again towards a windfarm. Stones and pebbles lay on the soil beneath the vines, but the ground between the rows was covered in grass.

        Sleepy Göttlesbrunn is in the heart of the small Austrian vine-growing region of Carnuntum, a short drive to the east of Vienna Airport. The wind blows three hundred days a year, lowering disease pressure to such a degree that the majority of production is organic. 

On the day I arrived, the temperature hit thirty-three degrees. The heat is, however, mitigated by forests and the River Danube, which flows unseen just a few miles to the north. ‘The Danube gives us cool nights’, according to Johanna Markowitsch of Weingut Markowitsch.

 

Göttlesbrunn

This being Austria, it should come as no surprise that a lot of very good white wines are made in Carnuntum. The Grüner Veltliners I tried were fuller-bodied than those from famous regions further west like the Wachau, with a lovely rich mouthfeel from long lees ageing or barrel fermentation. ‘We believe in working a lot with the lees’, said Hanna Glatzer of Weingut Glatzer, another producer in Göttlesbrunn.

 

Wines made from Grüner Veltliner can be labelled 'Carnuntum DAC', a designation which is used for regionally typical wines. Wines made from four other grape varieties – Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc), Chardonnay, Zweigelt and Blaufränkisch- may also be labelled this way. Blends, known as 'cuvées' here, qualify as Carnuntum DAC wines as long as two thirds of the blend comes from the grapes mentioned above. 

 

Chardonnay is a favourite at Weingut Markowitsch. Johanna Markowitsch commented that Chardonnay ‘can deal with the sun but also loves the cool nights’ in Carnuntum. She drove me to Ried Schüttenberg, a vineyard whose high limestone content suits the grape. It abuts the Maria Ellender Wald, a large forest north of the vineyards in Göttlesbrunn, which has a cooling effect.

 

Bunches of grapes on the vines in Schüttenberg were shrouded by black nets as a protection against wild boar and deer. I saw these nets elsewhere in Austria, where the main concern was hail. Markowitsch’s Ried Schüttenberg Chardonnay 2023, a ‘riedenwein’ (single vineyard wine), was mouth-filling with a touch of new oak. ‘The idea of all our whites is that they have power but also good acidity’, Johanna Markowitsch told me.

 

        Carnuntum is more renowned for its red wines, though. In the vineyard of Rosenberg I saw tiny Merlot berries growing on the vine. They were green, having not yet gone through véraison. Merlot apparently grows well on sand and gravel soils in Carnuntum, but Hanna Glatzer deemed it ‘challenging’ because its sugar content shoots up before the seeds are ripe.

 

        The most planted red grape in Carnuntum, and indeed Austria, is Zweigelt. In the vineyard of Rosenberg, it’s grown on clay, which is rare in Carnuntum. I was informed, however, that it can grow successfully just about anywhere, explaining its ubiquity. Although widely planted, Zweigelt 'doesn’t have the best reputation’, in the words of Benjamin Edthofer of Weingut Wieninger in Vienna, who said that it ‘can be tricky as a single varietal wine’.

 

Zweigelt ‘has many faces’, according to Johanna Markowitsch, but the wines tend to be full-bodied and always have a dark fruit character, with cherry a common flavour. The dark cherry note was also mentioned by Hanna Glatzer, who observed that Zweigelt has more ‘charming’ tannins than the other leading red grape in Carnuntum, Blaufränkisch.

 

        Hanna Glatzer had many interesting things to say about red wines. She observed that Blaufränkisch has blackberry, earthy and spicy notes in Carnuntum, with a tannin structure similar to that found in the French grape Syrah. You won't find jammy, overripe reds made in the region, despite the intense summer heat. 'Carnuntum wines are approachable', she said.

 

Lighter reds are also made in Carnuntum, from Pinot Noir and Sankt Laurent. I find it hard to get excited about the former, as shown by the fact that I didn't write a tasting note about the Pinot Noir I was given at Weingut Markowitsch. I was more eager to try a Sankt Laurent, although the one I tasted at Weingut Glatzer reminded me of a Pinot Noir! Hanna Glatzer remarked that it has good natural acidity and 'silky and smooth' tannins.

 

         The next day I drove to the region of Wagram, an hour to the west. The soil is mostly loess and it was very sunny and warm, so my mind turned to Washington State, where lovely red wines, especially Merlots, are made.  Inspired by my time in Carnuntum, I asked a winemaker if Merlot was grown in Wagram. The answer was an emphatic no. Perhaps my question came twenty years too soon.  

 

 

 

The Viennese Field Blend

 

In what feels like another lifetime, I taught English conversation classes at a university in Tokyo. One of my colleagues was an American from Tennessee called David. He told me about a fellow foreigner he had worked with in Saudi Arabia, who pursued a curious lifestyle. The man in question would live like a hermit while in Saudi, spending almost none of his very competitive salary. Then, at the end of the academic year, he would go to Vienna for a month and blow the lot. He did this every year.

 

Nussberg © Austrian Wine / WSNA

        I was in Vienna to learn about the city’s wines, so I didn’t get a chance to explore and imagine what this man might have spent all his money on. I did have a chance to do some driving, which was about the most stressful experience I’ve had since my flat in Japan began rocking crazily during a nighttime earthquake. Hopefully, then, some of his hard-earned cash went on taxis.

 

        Winemaking in Vienna has a long history. I learned from Benjamin Edthofer at Weingut Wieninger that vine growing continued in the city’s second district until the 1960s. In addition to Wieninger, which has vineyards in both the Bisamberg and Nussberg areas in the north of the capital, I also tasted wines at Weingut Christ.

 

I had an informative conversation about the differences between the Nussberg and the Bisamberg hills with Rainer Christ, the owner of Weingut Christ. He makes wines solely from the Bisamberg, so I asked him if wanted to have a vineyard on the Nussberg. ‘No’, he said, without hesitation.

 

The Bisamberg, to the north of the River Danube, is ‘the sunny side of Vienna’, he told me. Although the Nussberg is more famous historically, the Bisamberg has been ‘the most successful over the last 30 years’, he said. It’s greener, with forests. The soils are quite different, with more limestone found on the Nussberg. Rainer Christ used to have two vineyards on the Nussberg, but it was an unhappy experience.

Nussberg © Austrian Wine / WSNA

        Vienna’s gift to the world of wine is Wiener Gemischter Satz, a field blend. Only this style of wine, comprising at least three white grape varieties from the same vineyard and vinified as one, may be labelled with the DAC appendage, which indicates regionally typical wines. According to Benjamin Edthofer, the field blend was historically a good option in Vienna as it ensured ‘stable yields.’ Some grapes might struggle one year, but others would perform well, ensuring wine could reliably be produced.

 

     Only one of Wieninger’s Wiener Gemischter Satz wines is made using just three white grapes, the Bisamberg Wiener Gemischter Satz DAC 2023. To those from outside Austria, it might seem an incongruous French blend of Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc), Chardonnay and Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris), but the grapes have a long history in Austria.

 

Wieninger uses up to fifteen grapes in its field blends, though, which is what I find appealing about this style of wine. You can try a Gemischter Satz which includes several grape varieties you have no familiarity with. Neuberger, which I knew nothing about before travelling to Austria, appears in the majority of Wieninger’s field blends. 

 

I asked a winemaker in another region of Austria about Neuberger and he deemed it ‘a pain in the ass’ in the vineyard. In Vienna I was informed that it ‘lacks aromas’, suffers from the vine disease peronospora and requires ‘a lot of work.’ Probably best in a field blend then!

 

Grüner Veltliner is the main grape in field blends at Weingut Christ. Of the French grapes, Grauburgunder/Pinot Gris is the least favoured as its sugar content can shoot up. The high percentage of Grüner Veltliner was certainly noticeable in some of the wines I tried. Wieninger’s Wiener Gemischter Satz DAC 2023, which has about 40 percent of Grüner Veltliner in the blend, had a very distinct peppery character. I think this tasting note is really overused to describe wines made from Grüner Veltliner, but this one certainly had the peppery aroma in abundance.

 

I left Vienna with a half-bottle of a 2017 Wiener Gemischter Satz from the vineyard of Ulm, which is on the Nussberg. It had a hint of Fino Sherry about it, which was very appealing – if you like sherry.