Great Chardonnay Showdown
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The Great Chardonnay Showdown, held in the spring of 1980, was organized by Craig Goldwyn, the
wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...
columnist for the ''
Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'' and the founder of the
Beverage Testing Institute The Beverage Testing Institute (BTI) is a marketing service company that provides reviews for spirits, wines, and beers. It uses numerical scores and publishes books of its test results. The company's beer marketing program, the World Beer Champion ...
, with help from three
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
wine stores. A total of 221
Chardonnay Chardonnay (, , ) is a green-skinned grape variety used in the production of white wine. The variety originated in the Burgundy wine region of eastern French wine, France, but is now grown wherever wine is produced, from English wine, Englan ...
s from around the world were selected for the blind
wine competition A wine competition is an organized event in which trained judges or consumers competitively rate different vintages, categories, and/or brands of wine. Wine competitions generally use blind tasting of wine to prevent bias by the judges. Types of ...
.Grgich Hills Estate celebrates the 35th anniversary of The Great Chicago Chardonnay Showdown: Chicago Tribune called 1977 Chardonnay "The Best Chardonnay in the World"
January 15, 2015, PRNewswire/Grgich Hills Estate
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
and
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
were heavily represented, but entries from many countries around the world were included.


Competition

Five panels of five judges each first selected 19 finalists. Then ten of the original judges reviewed the finalists a second time. The winning wine was the Grgich Hills Wine Cellar
Sonoma County Sonoma County () is a county (United States), county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, its population was 488,863. Its county seat and largest city is Santa Rosa, California, Santa Rosa. It is to the n ...
Chardonnay 1977, which was the new winery's very first
vintage Vintage, in winemaking, is the process of picking grapes and creating the finished product—wine (see Harvest (wine)). A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In certa ...
. The winemaker was
Mike Grgich Miljenko "Mike" Grgić (born April 1, 1923) is a Croatian-American winemaker in California. He was born into a winemaking family in the town of Desne on Croatia's coastal region of Dalmatia. He is notable for being the winemaker behind the 197 ...
, who had earlier made the
Chateau Montelena Chateau Montelena is a Napa Valley winery most famous for winning the white wine section of the historic "Judgment of Paris" wine competition. Chateau Montelena's Chardonnay was in competition with nine other wines from France and California und ...
Chardonnay that won first place among white wines at the historic
Judgment of Paris Judgement (or US spelling judgment) is also known as ''adjudication'', which means the evaluation of evidence to decision-making, make a decision. Judgement is also the ability to make considered decisions. The term has at least five distinct u ...
wine competition A wine competition is an organized event in which trained judges or consumers competitively rate different vintages, categories, and/or brands of wine. Wine competitions generally use blind tasting of wine to prevent bias by the judges. Types of ...
.


See also

*
Globalization of wine Globalization, or globalisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term ''globalization'' first appeared in the early 20t ...
*
California wine California wine production has a rich viticulture history since 1680 when Spanish Jesuit missionaries planted ''Vitis vinifera'' vines native to the Mediterranean region in their established missions to produce wine for religious services. I ...
*
Grand European Jury Wine Tasting of 1997 In the Grand European Jury Wine Tasting of 1997, the Grand Jury Européen, consisting entirely of European judges, conducted a blind tasting of 27 Chardonnay wines from seven countries. Held in Bordeaux, 70 percent of the entries in the wine com ...


References


Further reading

*Taber, George M. ''Judgment of Paris: California vs France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine''. New York: Scribner, 2005. {{wines Wine tasting Wine-related events Chicago Tribune California wine French wine