#3: The Wine Heard Round The World

The Top Five Most Historic American Wines: A Series

NUMBER ONE: 1936 Beaulieu Vineyard Georges de Latour Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
NUMBER TWO: 1966 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon
NUMBER THREE: 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars SLV Cabernet Sauvignon

No list of the most important wines in American history could be considered legitimate without including the 1973 Stag’s Leap Vineyard SLV Cabernet Sauvignon, the American wine that came out on top at the now-famed “Judgement of Paris” tasting in 1976.

When George Tabor wrote in Time Magazine about an American wine besting the most lauded French wines in the world in a blind tasting, it was shocking to some. In the mid-seventies, there were a number of folks in the U.S. who knew quite well that winemakers here were making very serious wines of very high quality. But outside our shores, American wines were simply not taken seriously. They were derivatives of Coca-Cola and would never (or at least did not then) measure up in any way to Old World Wines.