Dominic Sandbrook

So that's 1976.

And actually, members of the Restless History Club will be hearing a bit more about this

on our bonus episode on Wednesday with the great wine writer Henry Jeffries, who will be talking about this and indeed about wine in the new world and the history behind it and the relationship with the British Empire and so on.

So that's on Wednesday.

But Tom, tell us a little bit about the judgment of Paris, because this is probably the most celebrated moment, one of the most controversial moments in the entire modern history of winemaking.

To be fair, we've all had American wines that taste like that.

But then, so a huge problem for American winemakers is that a lot of Americans think they shouldn't be making wine at all because they don't think alcohol should have any place in American culture.

I mean, by the way, wine experts, some of these people are the arbiters of French wine.

Yeah.

So, I mean, there's the head of the Oenological Institute of France.

There is the head of the Wine Academy.

There is the inspector general of the Appellation d'origine contrôlée board, which is basically the board that decides whether your wine, you know, gets appellation status, gets the sort of badge of quality.

So these are not just like the wine critic of Le Figaro or something.

These are like proper people.

Yeah, Stag's Leap.

And it had been planted brilliantly by a man called Warren Winiarski.

Couldn't be more American.

It's new and it's planted by a bloke called Warren.

Well, one of those wines in the judgment of Paris was from a winery, I think founded in something like 1971 or 1972 called Clos Duval.

So given a kind of artificial contrived French name to denote quality.