But 50 years ago, on May 24th, the unthinkable happened. Red and white wines from Napa made in the French style—a bottle of Stag’s Leap and Chateau Montelena from 1973—won the contest, ranking above acclaimed names such as Château Mouton Rothschild and Château Haut-Brion. Unlike the mythical Judgment of Paris, which led to the Trojan war, golden grapes did not provoke an actual conflict—but they did prompt some fighting talk. One French wine official later described the tasting as “our Waterloo”. The French first blamed the judges. They also, as usual, blamed the English. “Perfidious Albion” is what one winemaker called Spurrier to his face; others lobbed less literary insults behind his back. (In 2008 Spurrier was played memorably by Alan Rickman in “Bottle Shock”, Hollywood’s depiction of the tasting.) The Judgment of Paris was the shot heard round the wine world. Napa’s victory had two Nebuchadnezzar-size effects. First, it sparked demand for Californian wine at home and abroad. The volume of exported bottles of American wine more than quintupled between 1975 and 1980. Second, it inspired confidence in “new world” producers, including Argentina and Australia. “There is no more influential event in the wine world, ever,” claims Juan Muñoz-Oca, estate director at Stag’s Leap. Today the two winning bottles can be found at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of
American History, where George Washington’s uniform and the original star-spangled banner are also on display. Much can be discerned from how the two countries are marking the tasting’s 50th anniversary. Stag’s Leap and Chateau Montelena are hosting events around the world and pouring tastes of the acclaimed vintages. (The 1973 Stag’s Leap and Montelena were released with a price tag of $6 and $6.50, respectively, around $35-38 in today’s dollars. Now a single bottle costs thousands of dollars, if you can find one.) And following Ralph Waldo Emerson’s observation that “music and wine are one,” in July a new one-act opera based on the tasting will premiere in Napa. In France there will be no songs or spectacle. Ask winemakers there how often the Judgment of Paris is discussed, and they will claim almost never. (Though they will also point out that the French wines, on average, scored higher than Napa’s. And that they aged better, too.) The competitive element of the tasting obscures the fact that, in the decades following the Judgment, both American and French wines boomed, enjoying new markets and newly minted middle-class wine drinkers. Fifty years on, the scene is less convivial. Wine consumption is falling, with Gen Z and baby-boomers alike preferring to drink “less but better”. After being
associated with heart health, now wine is on the heart and mind of health officials, who say no amount of alcohol is safe. Wine is being “put in the same category as prostitution and drugs”, complains Stéphanie de Bouard- Rivoal of Château Angelus, a top-tier winery in Saint Émilion. Today winemakers in Bordeaux talk openly about la crise (the crisis). “Pretty bad” is how Bo Barrett, who runs Chateau Montelena, describes the situation in Napa. Both regions are seeing vines ripped out, as the supply of grapes outstrips demand. France and the EU have committed around €250m ($290m) to vine-uprooting. Of all the world’s wine regions, Burgundy has fared best. At about a third of Bordeaux’s size, it is smaller, less corporate and more coveted by connoisseurs. Its wines—reds made from Pinot Noir and whites from Chardonnay grapes—boast elegance and finesse. (Bordeaux’s reds are based on Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.) Burgundy’s rarity, exclusivity and sometimes astronomical prices have prompted even millionaires to complain they can no longer afford to drink it. On Liv-ex, a wine exchange, Burgundy’s share of sales has risen to around 23%, more than triple what it was ten years ago (see chart).
Both Bordeaux and Napa, in contrast, are experiencing “economic crises” and are “at a turning-point”, says William Kelley, editor-in-chief of the Wine Advocate. Yet their suffering has different causes. Bordeaux is “paying for the mischiefs of the past”, says Omri Ram of Château Lafleur, namely that it produced a “bubble” of too much wine that was “sold for the wrong reasons to the wrong clients”. Chinese buyers had thirsted after Bordeaux’s prestige labels—until Xi Jinping denounced lavish gifts, and sales sputtered. That left winemakers, who had been raising prices, vulnerable to a collapse in demand. The en primeur system governing how Bordeaux’s wines are sold has also stoked la crise. It facilitates pre-orders for new vintages, which hands cash to winemakers for cases delivered years later. With the price of older vintages now comparable to, or below, new releases, buyers are less keen to snap up the young stuff, which requires ageing and storage. It has created a doom loop, especially for the mid- and lower-tier wines. Last month wineries hosted their annual en primeur tastings, and the mood was tense. Some warn en primeur may cease to exist. Napa’s winemakers are feeling pinched for different reasons. In recent decades they doubled down on the American market, selling to baby- boomers at high prices rather than prioritising a global footprint. But consumers are ageing and buying less. In addition, Napa’s most important international market, Canada, has dried up: sales of American wine there fell by nearly 80% in 2025, after most provinces banned American alcohol in retaliation for tariffs. The cost of doing business in California (like France) is hangover-inducing, as is the red tape. “It’s hard for small producers to stay in business, so they’re gobbled up by larger wine companies,” says Mr Muñoz-Oca. Stag’s Leap is a case in point: Marchesi Antinori, an Italian firm, acquired sole ownership of it in 2023. Palates have also changed. Napa underwent a “Cabernetisation”, as it chased the high scores and price tags of big red wines. Consumers, however, have shifted away from that “monster truck” style of red wine, says Mr Kelley. Cuisine has become lighter, and people want more balanced reds with lower alcohol levels.
Both Napa and Bordeaux are trying to navigate their new reality. Consumers are opening bottles younger, so “we try to make them approachable,” says Blandine de Brier Manoncourt, co-owner of Château Figeac in Bordeaux. Some, including Château Angelus, have launched lower-tier wines to appeal to younger buyers. Its 2023 Tempo d’Angelus sells for around €22 a bottle, about a twentieth the price of its flagship wine. Today the competition is not between America and France. It is between wine and everything else. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//culture/2026/05/21/a-blind-tasting-revolutionised-the- wine-world-50-years-ago
The unlikely inspiration for North Korea’s first dictator Kim Il Sung’s regime was influenced by Christianity, a new book shows May 21st 2026 People have been predicting the collapse of North Korea’s communist dictatorship since 1948, when Kim Il Sung seized power with Josef Stalin’s backing. And yet, almost 80 years later, the regime is still there, and the Kim family are still in charge of it, having survived the Korean war, the fall of the Soviet Union, decades of national self-isolation and two dynastic transitions. Totalitarian repression, as well as assistance from powers such as China and Russia, help explain the regime’s resilience. “Korean Messiah” by Jonathan Cheng, a journalist at the Wall Street Journal, sheds light on a less appreciated force: faith.
In keeping with communist principles, North Korea is officially atheist. Nonetheless, in Mr Cheng’s telling, its system owes as much to Jesus, Mary and Joseph as it does to Marx and Engels. He argues convincingly that Kim Il Sung appropriated the rituals and dogma of religion when forging his political ideology. For example, all North Koreans are taught a set of decrees called the “Ten Principles for the Monolithic Ideology”. They are “so similar in language to the biblical Ten Commandments, and…fulfilled so similar a function in the lives of its population” that they “might as well have been etched on a pair of stone tablets”, Mr Cheng writes. Pyongyang had long been a hotbed of Christian thought. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the city became known as “the Jerusalem of the East” among Western missionaries in Asia. Kim’s ancestors were among the first converts; his parents were fervent Presbyterians. As a child, he accompanied his father to chapel, where he sang hymns and learned to play the organ. “This upbringing gave the young man a front-row seat to the power of faith —its power to mobilise, to offer succour, and, perhaps most importantly, to inspire awe, devotion, fear and zeal.” Kim’s exposure to Christianity also gave him an acute sense of the threat it posed to his hopes for absolute rule. After taking power in North Korea, Kim, by then an ardent Marxist and hardened anti-American crusader, came to see Christianity as a rival faith. Portraying himself as the true messiah, he brutally suppressed Christians, killing thousands of believers and sending more fleeing to the South.
Eventually the Great Leader’s teachings coalesced into a formal doctrine, known as Juche (self-reliance), which supplanted Marxism-Leninism as the foundation of the regime. Ideologues insisted that Kim’s dogma be treated as infallible. Mr Cheng quotes one North Korean escapee’s description of encountering Christianity after fleeing the country: “When they talked about God, it kept reminding me of Kim Il Sung…When they mentioned Jesus, it reminded me of Kim Jong Il.” The state enforces cult-like devotion to the ruling family. Jim Jones of Jonestown infamy was an admirer of Kim Il Sung. Jones’s acolytes met with North Korean officials more than a dozen times. In arguing that Christianity holds the key to understanding the regime, Mr Cheng underplays other influences, such as Korea’s long history of monarchy, Stalinism and communist ideology itself. But seeing North Korea as a quasi-religious project is illuminating. In addition to brute force, the Kim dynasty relies on indoctrination and inquisition to stay in power. If its subjects harbour doubts, they are not allowed to express them, on pain of the gulag or worse. The regime persecutes any belief system that could rival its own. North Koreans who watch television shows smuggled in from rich, democratic South Korea—which reveal how much better life is without a god-king—can face the death penalty. The greatest threat the Kim cult faces is not America, but apostasy. ■
For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//culture/2026/05/21/the-unlikely-inspiration-for-north- koreas-first-dictator