Wine Olympics

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A Wine Olympics was organized by the French food and wine magazine GaultMillau in 1979, three years after the historic Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 in which leading French experts blind tasted and ranked two California wines (a red and a white) higher than all of their French competitors.

In the Wine Olympics, a total of 330 wines from 33 countries were evaluated by 62 experts from ten nationalities. France dominated in both the number of wine entries and in the number of judges.

The 1976 Trefethen Vineyards Chardonnay from the Napa Valley won the Chardonnay tasting and was judged best in the world. Gran Coronas Mas La Plana 1970 from Spain received first place in the important Cabernet blend category. In the Pinot Noir competition, the 1975 Eyrie Vineyards Reserve from Oregon won first place. Tyrell Pinot Noir 1976 from Australia was selected for the "Gault Milleau World Dozen."

These and many other wine competitions have demonstrated that top quality wines can be produced in the New World and have stimulated the globalization of wine.

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The following wine competitions are unique and highly significant because (1) all tasting was done blind and (2) the results were listed in rank order from highest to lowest. For example, if 12 wines were evaluated, they were ranked from one (the highest) to 12 (the lowest). There were no multiple winners except in the case of multiple categories (for example one red wine winner and one white wine winner).


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