France is well known for many things but perhaps most famous as the place that makes the best wine in the world.  That reputation still lingers but it is no longer true.  Where is the best wine in the world now made?  California.  First proven in a blind taste test 30 years ago and repeated again now 30 years later to the same result, California makes the best wines :

THIRTY years had passed since the Judgment of Paris, when French oenophiles received a red nose at the hands of American upstarts in a blind wine-tasting competition.

But to the dismay of the French wine experts taking part in last night’s eagerly awaited rematch, Californian vintages have again trumped their Gallic counterparts.

The nose-off began in 1976, when Steven Spurrier, an Englishman who owned a wine shop in the French capital, invited a panel of French experts to a blind tasting of some of their own classic vintages against some Californian reds. To the horror of the entire French wine industry, the Americans won hands down.

Speaking as a Californian it is simultaneously pleasing and alarming that we are, in essence, more French than the French.  Pleasing because of course it is best to do things well and even better to be the best in the world.  Alarming because this peak of more-than-French refinement explains much about the disastrous social and political situation in California.  Cest la vie eh?

(Hat tip to Captain’s Quarter’s for the link.)