5 comments about Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine.

1. I thoroughly enjoyed Judgment of Paris which was given to be by my daughter for Christmas in 2007 knowing my fondness for wine. It is a wonderfully readable history of winemaking and the vintners of Napa Valley.Iloved the descriptions of the various "characters" that are at the heart of the success of Napa wines. I also enjoyed the discussion of the newer technology and approaches. I've already given several copies to other friends. It reads best with a glass of good Napa wine so that one can savor both the history and the current performance.



2. As a life-long wine lover, especially of California wines, this was a revelation. I especially enjoyed the background of how these winemakers came to CA -- the CA wine history, plus the French history, all leading up to the event make for a terrific thriller.



3. The arrived in great shape and in a timely fashion. I highly recommend this provider.



4. After far too many ghastly vintages from 1963 - 1974, and with the quality of backward French winemaking going unchallenged, the victory of New World California wines over their prestigious French counterparts in 1976 was, in hindsight, no surprise. Yet it was as great a shock to the French wine world as the collapse of the Maginot Line was to the French military establishment in May 1940. Unlike Andre Maginot, who never lived to see the tragic consequences of his and France's folly, French wine's top champions faced choosing between unbearable humiliation or dismissing the results as an aberration.
   
   "Time" journalist George Taber, who had the wine scoop of the century and to his credit knew what to do with it, here returns to his moment in the sun, developing the storyline into a full book. He chronicles the persons who were at the tasting and who were most impacted by the results. Taber reveals their ongoing struggle absorbing the unthinkable, whether for the winning Californians, who at the time made up the new wave within their own industry and were given a grand opportunity; or in the case in France, where no such young wine Turks had credibility, and the fall out from the tasting was an unacknowledged PR nightmare. Unable to accept the cultural implications, many French refused to countenance the results - indeed at the actual tasting one desperate taster tried rewriting votes! To this day there exist Europeans who adamantly look down their - often Gallic - noses at wine from outside Europe. Yet increasingly, along with the tired fruit of those aging Bordeaux wines, such chauvinism more and more fades from respectable wine debate. Winemaking has moved a long way from the crude days of Napoleonic Minister of the Interior Chaptal's policy of using the French sugar beet crop for 'improving' the country's wines.
   
   This book's major focus is humans, not the wines; Taber discusses the repercussions of the tasting far more than the actual event, though the curious secondary stories leading up to the tasting receive the sort of attention usually saved for more serious historical moments. The larger themes - of not resting on your laurels, and the facades that can be the reality of institutional image - emerge with an inexorable - and some might say, overdue - inevitability.
   
   Perhaps it was fated these two birthplaces of democracy, France and America, should be the players in this most democratic-driven event: a blind tasting. (Lady Justice - by contrast - keeps one eye open just to avoid such unacceptabe results, and since the tasting any number of European wine advocates have sympathized and even embraced such a fallback.) Not surprising, too, that the more capitalist country and can-do Americans should triumph over the less egalitarian 'old world' of the more rigid and stratified hierachical universe of French wine estates, with their aristocratic trappings.
   
   Complacency and arrogance are poor resources to contest with - and the French wine world got their ears boxed for just such attitudes. Instead of pulling out all the stops and setting bottles of '59 Lafite or perhaps a '61 Latour-a-Pomerol against the California cabs, or demanding the tasting include pinot noir, which conveniently was omitted because California didn't produce quality pinot noir, the French were snookered into permitting others a say in 'setting the table'. Prejudice and ignorance, kissing cousins of the small-minded and snobbish, got their comeuppance, and the French were hoisted by their own petard. Which in plain language means they foolishly set off the equivalent of a wooden wine crate bursting with gunpowder under their own carefully inscribed world of carefully controlled classes and prices. Generally unfamiliar with blind tasting's pecularities, where fruit and alcohol can trump more subtle qualities, the French tasters naively presumed an expertise they did not possess in comparing varietal wines from differing regions. They were blindsided. Almost none of the tasters had any idea which was domestic wine and which California wine. (Oddly enough, when the tasting was retried ten years later in America, the American tasters could not separate the wines by country.)
   
   Recently the tasting was redone. Once again the French showed they haven't learned very much. French chardonnays, which from great vintages and the best sites can age and develop, were dropped. Once again pinot noir was absent. Chateau Haut-Brion refused to participate, but could not stop the tasting from buying examples of its wine in the marketplace. (Those evil entrepeneurs!) The original losing Bordeaux were trotted out again on the ignorant myth, long disproved by modern enology, that somehow wines with no great fruit when young would suddenly find some after twenty years of aging! The better made and fruitier California wines swept to total victory, sweeping the top placements. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
   
   History was at work here. Yet this sort of challenge was not new for the California winemakers; for many decades avant-garde California wine makers, ambitious to compete with the very best, had been holding such tastings at home, measuring their Chardonnays against Puligny-Montrachets, Chassagne-Montrachets and Meursaults; while judging their best Cabernets against Pauillacs, St.Juliens, and Margaux. In the early seventies the influential English wine writer Harry Waugh, with an impeccable understanding of European wine, published a series of highly impressed tasting notes on these new esoteric California wines he had tasted in travels to California. A small handful of California's newest enologists were experimenting with a variety of new processes, especially in maintaining a wine's fruit. Now obscured, but then still potent icons for young winemakers, were extraordinary wines made by a few legendary wine-makers, such as Andre Tchelistcheff and the extraordinary Martin Ray. (You can read about Ray's colorful career in: Vineyards in the Sky: The Life of Legendary Vintner Martin Ray Those of us who tasted the best wines made by Tcheslistcheff and Ray were perfectly aware of just how good the best California wines could be.
   
   Thus the potential for great wine in California was largely proven long before the '76 tasting - what needed to change was a scaling up so that more great wine could be produced, and this in fact was already well under way. By the the time the French were sitting around dishing the Paris Tasting results California was already bottling the watershed Cabernet vintage of 1974.
   
   Talent's book makes stimulating reading for more than just wine snobs - what's in play here are larger issues, common throughout all levels of society.



5. I bought this book thinking is was all about the 1976 Tasting in Paris but it turns out that this book is really the history of California Winemaking and all of the characters that have put California Wines where they are today. For the lover of California wines, this is a must read. Once you start reading, you can't put it down.

No comments about Fodor's Around Paris with Kids, 3rd Edition: 68 Great Things to Do Together (Around the City with Kids).

1 comments about Lonely Planet Paris Encounter (Lonely Planet Encounter Paris) (Best Of).

1. A friend and I visited Paris for the first time together and Lonely Planet made it so easy! The book is organized very well and most of our itinerary we took straight out of the book. It also has great maps that made it easy to navigate the city (with the heart of Paris being able to be discovered on foot). I also bought the Lonely Planet China and have so fat found it incredibly useful. LONELY PLANET ROCKS!

No comments about Pudlo France 2008-2009: A Hotel and Restaurant Guide (Pudlo France).

1 comments about New Paris Interiors.

1. I'm going to love poring over this book over and over again. It's impossible to look through it all at once, anyway, it's so big and the visual onslaught is overwhelming. Being a middle-class, Great Plains middle-aged person, I will never see these apartments and rooms myself, but it's fun to see how world-class artists, musicians, actors, directors, designers and financiers like to decorate their homes. Some of them, I swear, are compulsive collectors - stuff *everywhere*! Most are beautiful rooms, lending lots of ideas or at least daydreams for one's own home.
   
   The photography is lovely; the text is in blocks of English, French, and German, so if you want to practice your French or German, this is a fun way to do it. If you're a Francophile, like me, it's entertaining and educational peering through those windows out to the Parisian sights.
   
   My only complaint is how huge the book is; it's not a lap-book, that's for sure. It is definitely worth the money, in my opinion.

No comments about Michelin Red Guide 2008 Paris: Restaurants & Hotels (Michelin Red Guide: Paris).

5 comments about Michelin the Green Guide Paris (Michelin Green Guides).

1. I am totally disappointed. Not only but will think twice before ordering from this site. I ordered and PAID for the Green Guide Paris on the 23.09.07, and to date, i.e. till today 04.11.07, I have not yet taken delivery of my order. My delivery date should have been 25.10.07. On the 25.10.07 I complained that I did not receive anything and was given a delivery date of 28.10.07, and was told to complain once again if I did not receive it by the 01.11.07, which I did.
   At this rate all I am expecting now is another eta delivery date!
   
   May I repeat, this item was paid for immediately on order by credit card!!



2. "Les Guides Mich" as the French refer to this series, is a series of tour books for different regions of France. Some are available only in French; the most popular are in English.
   A trip to Paris DEMANDS this guide -- far superior to Rick Steve's series.
   Walking tours, wonderful maps, and enough information for even the persons who have often visited Paris. I also suggest, for the photography, National Geographic's "PARIS"
   
   The Michelin RED guides are for lodging and restaurants, by the way.



3. Michelin the Green Guide Paris (Michelin Green Guides)
   The main issue is the way the guide is constructed: neighborhoods by alphabetical order... I was walking from one area to another and had to try to find out which page to go. each area has a good detailed map but the maps are not linked and when moving one won't know where the map continues.
   Also, there are very few hotels/restaurants listed and minor attractions, like small museums, are hardly reported.
   I would not buy again



4. A splendid pocket book to take with you as you walk or ride through Paris, notes on most buildings, good restaurants and handy cafes to stop by as you travel and a thorough historic background to this lovely City.



5. I have used the Michelin green guides for years and am now in the travel business, specifically doing business in France. I find this current edition a bit lacking, though it is generally a good guide. Unfortunately, there seems to be a "dumbing-down" of the guides in English (are we Americans not sophisticated travelers?); the same guide written is French is much more complete and detailed; I would opt for it if you read French...if not, for a more detailed cultural guide try Blue Guide Paris

No comments about Metro Stop Paris: An Underground History of the City of Light.

5 comments about Paris (City Guide).

1. The book (more specific the maps)was very helpful in picking the area we want to stay when in Paris.
   I looked alot about the different areas and how to organize my trip to the city.



2. . The information about the history of Paris was Ok.
   . Ok with the walking tour
   . All the highlights and backdoor are inside this guide
   
   BUT...looking with a backpacker eyes..
   
   . They should reduce the big restaurant list and make a better explanation of the highlights is the sight section.
   
   Just for your information, I love Lonely Planet...this is a constructive recommendation that I give to all the city guides...
   
   Another important thing, specially for what they call "A city guide"...they should give more information (map and path) of the buses. I found it difficult to understand which bus is convenient to go from one place to another.
   I wanted to use the bus in Paris intead of metro to see the beautifull places, but I couldn't. And I will not mention how difficult is the way back to the hotel using the night transportation.
   
   So, I think, less restaurant and better transport and sight information. Yes, I know that you can buy maps and whatever...but...I am paying more that US$15 for a city guide, man...



3. I enjoyed this guide. I found it helpful for differnt sites to see and places to go. Of course you have your big hitters such as The Arc de Triumph, Eiffle Tower, Notre Dame, Louvre, Sacre Coure etc but it gave ideas of other places to go as well that some people wouldn't think of. I will be traveling with a small child and having places to go that would be interesting and fun to them was a help as well. I liked that it gave different discount ideas. I like the maps and other little secrets that are enclosed to not only save time and money but ensure safety and piece of mind as well!



4. I've used Lonely Planet guides before, and this is the second Paris edition I've used. The book is structured in very logical way, by arrondissements. Descriptions, directions, addresses, and maps are excellent. The walking tours are particularly good - very descriptive with little to no back-tracking. I appreciate that prices and hours of operation are updated and spelled out clearly.



5. Paris is a fascinating city. As a traveler familiar with Lonely Planet's format, the Paris guide was very helpful, particularly with the walking tour and excursion descriptions. I found the maps easy to use and there was a ton of information. Unfortunately, there isn't anything inexpensive about Paris, but public transportation is reasonable and accessible. Thank you, Lonely Planet, for continuing to put out a great travel guide.

5 comments about Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris.

1. Before purchasing this book, I read all the customer comments which gave nothing but praise. I just don't get it. I wish one of the reviewers would have given me tips on how to stay awake while plodding through each sentence/paragraph, along with where to find a single nugget in these pages worth remembering. Okay, I'll probably always wonder how the author's love of boxing was deemed worth inclusion, but then I wonder why the entire book was printed. I feel suckered! And can't think of anything to recommend this book. My advice is to spend your money on ANYTHING written by M.F.K. Fisher, "The Tummy Trilogy" by Calvin Trillin or "Blue Trout and Black Truffles" by Joseph Wechsberg for much more pleasurable reading.



2. This is a fantastic book, but if you've never cracked The New Yorker open before, you might not like the style. Very in the moment and tongue in cheek, Liebling is a master wordsmith leaving no offense done to him by the onset of modernity unheckled. Some of the greatest tidbits come when he derrides the famous Michelin Star rating system for French restaurants, now a standard that chefs have literally killed themselves over - Liebling reminds you that its just a rating from a TIRE manufacturer and that he feels it marked the decline of real French cooking.
   
   I read passages of this book out loud to friends and family, most notably the ones dealing with the immense amounts of food, and always got a laugh. This is not a book dealing with the upper crust of French high society, but rather a street wise, in the guts little tome that entertains and educates - though sadly, it is unlikely one can find the Paris that Liebling describes anymore.



3. I have to say first of all that I'm a sucker for all of the "Paris in the early part of the twentieth century" literature. I love Celine and Miller, but my favorite was Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. Well, Between Meals is no A Moveable Feast but it certainly is a high quality read that I can unquestionably recommend to you.
   
   Liebling, make no mistake, is a top notch writer and his sentence structure, use of metaphor, and style have much to offer aspiring wordsmiths. He has an eye for the essential and this is particularly true if you're at all like me as far as food is concerned. Liebling is a true gourmand and, even though I am completely unlearned and unappreciative in regards to fine dining, I still enjoyed his narration and memories of that splendid age.
   
   The best of these essays is "Passable" where he recalls his old girlfriend from his student years. Liebling informs us that he does a poor job in reconstructing her but his description of their romance is quite compelling. I loved that essay just as I did the one on Mirande. This is a world long gone but we're fortunate that books like this are still in print. Reading it will give you a snapshot of beauty that will hang like a Renoir in the corridors of your mind.



4. This book was strongly recommended to me by a friend who is from Europe and is very discerning when it comes to American writers. I'm glad that I have it.
   
   While not nearly as zany or as challenging as Kerouac or Burroughs, this work, at its best, is rich, insightful and intensely funny: "What he called his pipes("ma tuyauterie"), being insufficiently excercised, lost their tone, like the leg muscles of a retired champion. When, in his kindly effort to please me, he challenged the escargots en pots de chambre, he was like an old fighter who tries a comeback without training for it."
   
   The language is elegant and piercing, despite what the hypercritics have said; and the work stands as an opus to epicurean bliss.
   
   It's well worth the read before, after, or in between the wonderful meals!



5. Did anyone ever love Paris, or at least eating in Paris, like Liebling. I share his love for the city and for the cuisine. Perhaps this colors my view but I really enjoyed this book.