Steven Spurrier later served as chairman of the judging panel for the British Decanter, and also visited Croatia. He died on March 9, 2021. Back in 1976, he personally selected six white (chardonnay) and red (cabernet sauvignon and its blends with other varieties) American wines, and four French wines of the same style.
The drama at the InterContinental
Hotel He did not expect the Americans to win, he just wanted to get a little publicity so that the wine shop he opened in Paris could do better. The drama at the InterContinental Hotel there was described in the book Paris Judgement by George M. Taber, an American journalist who was at the judging. The book was also published in our country under the same title: Paris Judgement.
A story from half a century ago made Miljenko Grgić, or Mike Grgich, famous. At the time, he was the chief oenologist at the Chateau Montelena winery, whose Chardonnay was convincingly declared the best white wine by French judges in 1973. Grgić later opened the Grgich & Hills winery with his partner Austin Hills, which he ran practically until his death on December 13, 2023. He passed the 100 mark.
And the Pole was better than the Frenchman
Today, Miljenko's daughter Violet and nephew Ivo Jeramaz are at the helm. And among the red wines, a Californian won: cabernet sauvignon Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, also from 1973, narrowly outpaced the famous Bordeaux wine Mouton Rotchshild, which was three years older. Stag's Leap was founded in 1970 by Warren Winiarski, a descendant of Polish emigrants.
We thought we recognized French wines, but when we saw them, they were Californian. And vice versa. We would automatically say that an empty, watery wine was Californian, but that was not true, Claude Dubois Millot, who was then one of the directors of the famous restaurant guide Gault Millau, contritely admitted after the evaluation. It should also be said that since that evaluation, the largest French wineries have generally not sent samples to similar competitions.
The Paris Verdict is also the title of the book
The father of modern American winemaking, Robert Mondavi, with whom Grgić and Winiarski collaborated for years, was perhaps the most proud of the results of the Paris Verdict. I had the pleasure of working with both of the true heroes of this story. They were certainly more skilled than me, but together we worked, made plans and dreamed of a day like that in 1976, Mondavi wrote in the foreword to the book The Paris Verdict.
Miljenko Grgić was born in Desne in the Neretva Valley. He studied agronomy in Zagreb and left the country as a final year student, arriving in the USA via Germany and Canada. There, he initiated research into the origins of the most popular Zinfandel variety. Genetics proved that it was our Kaštela crljenak, which was exported to the USA via Vienna. On Pelješac, in Trstenik, he founded the Grgić Winery, which produces plavac and pošip.
The Americans also made a film, but...
In Zagreb, together with the team from the Faculty of Agriculture, he also launched a foundation for scholarships for talented Croatian students of viticulture and winemaking. A good number of them also used the scholarship to stay at the Californian winery Grgich & Hills. The film The Bottle Shock was made about the Paris Judgment in 2008, which was clumsily translated as The Duel of the Winemakers. It is interesting to watch, but the story is very romanticized, and Miljenko Grgić is not mentioned in it.
Among the producers were father and son Jim and Bo Barrett, owners of Chateau Montelena, who were very angry when Grgić started his winery and therefore tried to erase him from film history. They couldn't from real history because he was inducted into the California Winemakers Hall of Fame.
Ended up in the Museum of American History
A bottle of his Chateau Montelena Chardonnay is, like the winning red from Stag's Leap, in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. This bottle of 1973 Chardonnay was made by Miljenko Mike Grgich, winemaker at Chateau Montelena Winery in Calistoga, California, it says under the white wine bottle. In short: This bottle of 1973 Chardonnay was made by Miljenko Mike Grgich…
