Show Notes
This month we, in California especially, will be inundated with reminders that 50 years ago this May a few pioneering California winemakers beat the French at their own game in a blind tasting that came to be known as the Judgement of Paris. The rise of California wine on the global stage began when French judges preferred California wines to their own Bordeauxs and Borgognes. California won, and the golden age of California wine followed for the next several decades. At least that’s been the doctrine for the last 50 years. Let me suggest an alternative perspective on this historical event: The French won. “But,” you’ll insist, “They didn’t! It’s a matter of historical record.” It depends on which game we think was being played. If we think the game was, “Who makes a better Cabernet or Chardonnay?” Sure, California won that game. But was that really the most important game that was being played that day in 1976? I don’t think so. I think the more important game being played 50 years ago was, “What is the global benchmark for fine wine?” It was a game the French couldn’t lose no matter what wines the judges picked. The French won the Judgment of Paris merely by agreeing to the tasting because it positioned California wines, and any other would-be wines of global importance, in the position of imitating French wines. California only won at being the best imitators of French tastes in wine. But the French won the bigger prize. They showed that if you wanted to be taken seriously, you had to emulate them. You had to follow their lead. The Judgment of Paris created the dynamic that established the French as the arbiters and definers of taste in wine. They became the producers and directors of the game, and the rest of the world became mere players. And so for 50 years California wine has not been Californian. It has mostly been French wine made in California. We even aged our Judgement of Paris-winning wines in imported French oak. Outside of Europe, nine varieties of grapes account for over 50% of the global wine vineyard area, and most of those grapes have French names. Most people in wine are so inculcated in this way of thinking that it’s probably hard for them to imagine a different kind of wine world. That’s how total the French victory was: We can’t imagine wine without French grapes. California has essentially never even tried to develop its own wine culture… despite the fact that there are three species of grapes endemic to California. That’s three times as many species as the French have, but we never even tried to build our own wine varieties from them. Do you know any named wine grape varieties that have Vitis californica genetics? A century before the Judgement of Paris, a wine made from America’s oldest wine grape, Norton, won the award for “best red wine of all nations” at the Vienna World’s Fair of 1873. Yes, an American wine made from an American hybrid grape won a tasting that compared it to the best wines from all over Europe. Why didn’t we celebrate the 150th anniversary of that victory three years ago? While there’s a certain amount of pride to be taken in beating someone at their own game, it’s still their game. The greater pride comes from building your own game that represents your tastes, your culture, your grapes, and your ideas of what wine can be. Everywhere can do this, and will do this differently, leading to a diversity of amazing wine cultures around the world. I think it’s time for another tasting. This time the rule is that your wine has to be your own, from your local grapes or other indigenous fruit. And I have a prediction of the outcome: We will all be winners.
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Here’s a quick mention of a few upcoming things that I’ll say more about in the future: First, the book release party for my book Wine Liberated will be held in Ithaca, NY at Autumn Leaves Bookstore on November 14th. Wine will be served. It’s an anarchist book store. I’ll be there, trying to inspire a new odyssey for the next century of wine exploration. Second, the Embracing Hybrid Grapes conference is happening February 21-22 at UC Davis and in Berkeley at the Donkey & Goat winery. Tickets will go on sale in a month-ish, and we are looking for sponsors and hybrid wine producers who want to showcase their herbicide free wine to a thirsty west coast. Third, I’m going to MC Undercurrent 2027, which is THE organic and biodynamic wine conference in New Zealand, maybe the entire southern hemisphere. It’s June 1-3 in Queenstown, and the amazing Alica Anderson of Amvive will be the keynote speaker. Finally, please subscribe at beyondorganicwine.substack.com to support this podcast and all the work of Beyond Organic Wine. Thank you! At this point in history, Halloween 2026, talking about the very scary crisis in agriculture, especially in the US, may be like being on the Titanic and brining attention to the fact that the boilers are flooded. It’s true, and it’s a seriously serious issue… but it’s merely a symptom of much bigger issues. So I start this episode with a quote from my guest as a reminder of where our focus needs to be. I started a boycott of glyphosate and all herbicides in wine because it is an important statement that we don’t need to tolerate discussion about this anymore. The known knowns of glyphosate are utterly damning, and even though there are certainly many unknowns, they give zero reason to excuse its use. And yet this boycott doesn’t solve the larger issues. And Dr. Michelle Perro reminds us of the power and responsibility we have as agents of change, as instigators and initiators. But we need to speak up, stand up, and own our capacity to re-engage with our communities in not letting our lives be dictated by corporations who seek short-term material gain and the power to protect and increase their profit-making ability despite its devastating effects on humans and all of the lives with whom we share this world. Wine invites us to think about the future. We make decisions today in wine that we know we won’t taste, in some cases, for years. Wine asks us to think long-term. To think perennially. To think about systems that exceed our own brief lifetimes. I find it ironic that we think we can’t live and make wine without these novel chemicals that were only invented a few decades ago, that are harmful for us in multiple, intergenerational ways, when our wine cultures were developed over thousands of years without fossil fuels, let alone chemistry, I know it isn’t easy to farm ecologically, but easy is only a short term solution, and short term thinking seems to have created some long term problems. We find ourselves deeply invested in an approach to winegrowing that is only possible with chemicals. But that doesn’t make those chemicals good or wise, and examples to the contrary, the hundreds of folks I’ve interviewed for this podcast, prove that these chemicals are not the only way to grow grapes commercially. I know that there can be pretty extreme consequences to weaning off some of these things when there aren’t other easy alternatives, and it would suck to be the people who bear the burden of those consequences in our lifetime. But I think those consequences can be felt voluntarily by us now or they can be felt by our children involuntarily, because agricultural approaches that are only possible with chemicals are not sustainable in the long term. If you haven’t read my post, How To Grow Wine Without Herbicides, please do. My guest is Dr. Michelle Perro. Dr. Perro is a veteran pediatrician with over four decades of experience in acute and integrative medicine, co-founder and CEO of GMOScience, a 501(c)(3) no
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For those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, Happy Harvest, Merry Samhain, and a Celebratory Equinox to you all wherever you are. This episode is about Magic, the cunning arts that have been practiced for millennia in most cultures.
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com