A Witness to the Tasting

Posted by Tom Wark on May 30, 2006

I suspect we’ll be seeing more of this in the wine writing world in the weeks to come. Scott Tracy is the sommelier at La Toque in Napa Valley and very well known for his expertise. He also maintains a blog and has written about his experience at the recent re-enactment of the Paris Tasting. It turns out that Scott poured and worked the tasting.

Scott’s a pretty astute guy and mentions something that I never thought of when writing earlier about the run up to the tasting and the controversy surrounding it (some didn’t want the tasting to be done blind): Scot speculates that some very high end CA wineries didn’t want to participate, not because they didn’t want to be tasted blind against the French wines, but because they didn’t want to be tasted at all against their own CA comrades in winemaking.

This makes perfect sense. Why would Screaming Eagle under any circumstances want to be bested by a CA winery that sells its Cab for $100 less? It’s the same reasoning that keeps the big name, big prices wineries from entering the many well run wine competitions across the country.

In any case, Scott’s post, and blog, is well worth a read if you are interested in an insider’s view of the re-enactment. Also coming in to print this week is Dan Berger’s article in his Vintage Experiences newsletter. Dan was a judge at the tasting.