50 years after the Judgment of Paris, could history repeat itself?
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We tasted 12 mature California and Bordeaux wines blind, with 18 experienced Hong Kong Wine Society tasters ranking the wines. The lineup itself was weighted toward California—8 California wines versus 4 Bordeaux—so that is important context when looking at the results.
My personal top five were:
1st place tied: 1981 Mayacamas Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon 1st place tied: 1975 Château Léoville Las Cases 2nd: 1971 Château Haut-Brion 3rd: 1977 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Lot 2 4th: 1974 Ridge Vineyards Geyserville Zinfandel
My top three were extremely close, and I was impressed by how beautifully the Mayacamas had evolved. Three of my top five were Californian, although with 8 California wines among the 12, the odds were certainly stacked in their favor.
The group of 18 tasters produced an even more intriguing result:
1st: 1977 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Lot 2 2nd: 1971 Château Haut-Brion 3rd: 1974 Ridge Vineyards Geyserville Zinfandel 4th: 1978 Clos du Val Cabernet Sauvignon 5th: 1970 Freemark Abbey Cabernet Sauvignon
The symmetry with history was hard to ignore! At the original 1976 Judgment of Paris, it was the 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon that famously took first place among the reds. Different vintage, different bottles and different tasters—but nearly 50 years later, Stag’s Leap once again came out number 1 in a blind tasting alongside mature Bordeaux.
Not every bottle showed as it should. The 1975 Heitz Cellar Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, which finished last, seemed musty to me and was a compromised bottle rather than a fair reflection of the wine. The 1975 Spring Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon also did not seem completely fresh and therefore was difficult to judge fairly.
What stayed with me was not a question of California versus Bordeaux, but how convincingly these mature California wines have aged. Blind tasting removes the labels, reputations and expectations—and nearly half a century after Paris, Stag’s Leap did it again.