A glass or two of vino, I find, is the best of all remedies for pride

Thirty years ago, on 24 May 1976, Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant, presented Californian wines side by side with French classics at a blind tasting in Paris. The assembled French experts were horrified to discover that they had preferred the American intruders. One judge asked for her scorecards to be returned; others complained that Spurrier had deliberately biased the proceedings. For a while he was persona non grata in the French vineyards.

The anniversary of that event is being celebrated here and in America with reruns, despite three of the original French producers, led by Paul Pontallier of Château Margaux, refusing to join in. Nor is the anniversary a cause of uniform rejoicing in California. James Barrett, the owner of the winning Chardonnay, quarrelled with his former winemaker, a tough nut of a Croatian with the biting name of Miljenko Grgich, who is now his competitor. Barrett and Grgich cannot be invited to the same event, and refer to each other with a quantity of ressentiment that would have confirmed Nietzsche's view of the democratic culture. Indeed, the whole episode is an object lesson in resentment, and proof of the sinful pride of human nature.

Now, it seems to me that the best of all remedies for pride is wine, and I am baffled that it has not worked on Messrs Pontallier, Barrett and Grgich. After a glass or two, I find myself able to do what we all should do, and which only pride forbids, which is to rejoice in the success of my rivals. A world that contains success is better than a world without it, and under

the influence of wine all success casts credit on the drinker. Wine

offers a glimpse of the world sub specie æternitatis, in which good things show their value, no matter who possesses them.

One of those good things is history. Blind tastings assume that wine is addressed solely to the senses, and that knowledge plays no part in its appreciation. To think you can judge a wine from its taste and aroma alone is like thinking you can judge a Chinese poem by its sound, without knowing the language. And just as words sound different to the one who knows their meaning, so do wines taste different to the one who can locate them in a place and a time. The Cabernet Sauvignon that beat Mouton-Rothschild into second place in 1976 was Stag's Leap, made by a Warren Winiarski with young vines from a new vineyard in a winery founded in 1972, in a state (California) whose wine industry was invented in the 19th century by a flamboyant Hungarian count. Ponder all those matters carefully, and you will allow the motto that used to grace every bottle of Mouton before it was reclassified as a premier cru: premier ne puis, second ne daigne.

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