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In no other category has American wine so successfully challenged the hegemony of the Old World than in those wines based on the Bordeaux model (i.e., produced from Cabernet Sauvignon and its cousins—Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec and Petit Verdot). It's now been 30 years since what has come to be known as the Judgment of Paris, a blind tasting at which a group of French wine writers, restaurateurs, and winemakers ranked a 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet in first place, ahead of a bevy of Bordeaux, including First Growths such as the '70 Mouton and '70 Haut Brion.
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In no other category has American wine so successfully challenged the hegemony of the Old World than in those wines based on the Bordeaux model (i.e., produced from Cabernet Sauvignon and its cousins—Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec and Petit Verdot). It's now been 30 years since what has come to be known as the Judgment of Paris, a blind tasting at which a group of French wine writers, restaurateurs, and winemakers ranked a 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet in first place, ahead of a bevy of Bordeaux, including First Growths such as the '70 Mouton and '70 Haut Brion. A "replay" of that tasting in 2006 did not exactly replicate the results of three decades prior, but American wines again emerged as the top vote-getters.
Much has changed in those 30 years. Not only have Europeans who formerly decried the results of that tasting as a fluke come around to begrudgingly acknowledge American wines as worthy of a place at the best tables, the wines themselves have changed. The fashion among domestic Cabernet producers today is for big, powerful, dense and richly fruited wines with plush, almost creamy, textures. It's an open question as to whether today's soft, voluptuous Cabernets will age as gracefully as those from the late '60s and early '70s, but there can be no denying their appeal to both influential wine critics and consumers alike.
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