A wine competition is an organized event in which trained judges or consumers competitively rate different vintages or bands of wine. There are two types of wine competitions, both of which use blind tasting of wine to prevent bias by the judges.
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Beginning in the 1960s, a number of winemakers in California aspired to create wines that could rival the great wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy, which they so greatly admired. These wines were their standards of excellence, which they bought, drank, studied, and emulated. By the early 1970s, a number had produced wines that they believed were outstanding, but had great difficulty marketing them, even the United States. The results of some early blind competitions were discounted by the wine world.[citation needed] Although the competitions were blind, the argument was that the judges somehow knew which wines they were tasting and were biased. Another was that the quality of the French wines was reduced in transit across the ocean.
However, the results of the Judgment of Paris were not ignored. The judges ranked a California wine number one among the ten white wines, and they also ranked another two California wines among the top four white wines. They also ranked a California red wine number one among ten reds.
The results shocked the world of wine and led to the recognition that world-class wines could and were being produced outside France. This, in turn, led other New World wine makers in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, and a number of other countries to believe that they, too, might be able to compete with the very best. The results also led to raised aspirations among Old World producers such as Spain, Italy and Portugal. Some critics believe that the consequence has been even higher quality in French wines and that the results of the Paris Wine Tasting have benefited consumers around the world.