The Club was delighted to welcome back its Honorary Vice-President, Jasper Morris MW, for another ‘Judgement of Oxford’ blind tasting. This was the second part of a tasting inspired by the historic ‘Judgement of Paris’ tasting of 1976 when Steven Spurrier decided to show how good Californian wines had become by pitting examples of top quality red and white wines from there against wines from the classic French regions of Bordeaux and Burgundy in a blind tasting in Paris. At that tasting, wines were judged and given scores by a panel of French wine critics and, to their horror, the Californian wines came out on top. It has to be said that the wines tasted were very young and had not reached their full potential. So it was decided to hold two simultaneous ‘Judgement’ tastings in California and London of the same vintages of the same red wines thirty years later in 2006, again organised by Stephen Spurrier. Jasper was one of the London judges and the others were also leading wine experts, like Jancis Robinson, Hugh Johnson and Michael Broadbent. Once more Californian wines came out on top – by an even wider margin – thereby proving that American wines can age just as well as their Old World counterparts. There was, however, no re-creation of the white wine tasting as the original wines would have been well past their best by 2006.
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