George M. Taber

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Journalist and entrepreneur George M. Taber was a reporter and editor with Time magazine in the United States and Europe for 21 years, working in Brussels, Bonn, Houston, Washington, DC, and New York. Stationed in Paris between 1973 and 1976, he reported extensively on French wine and cooking, including a Time cover story on chef Michel Guerard and his nouvelle cuisine.

It was during that period that he reported on the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976. In that blind tasting by leading French experts, unknown California wines were ranked higher than France’s best, an event that revolutionized the world of wine.

Taber began his own business newspaper in 1988 and although he interviewed and wrote about presidents of both the United States and France, it is his brief four paragraph story about the Paris wine competition that will go down in history. It’s been called “the most significant news story ever written about wine” (Blake).

[edit] Sources

Gray, W. Blake. The story behind the story that made wine history. San Francisco Chronicle, June 16, 2005. [1]

Taber, George M. Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine. New York: Scribner, 2005.