Exploring Bordeaux Blends: The Judgment of Paris & Super Tuscans

In our Explorer Series, we choose a style of wine and compare the scores and prices of wines from different production regions around the world.

The Judgment of Paris and the Birth of “Super Tuscans”

In May 1976, the wine world was turned upside down when wines from Napa Valley, California won a blind tasting competition in Paris that featured wines from the top Bordeaux châteaux along with Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley. Since 1976, the wine industry in Napa Valley has exploded. Many of today’s top producers opened their doors in the years following the famous tasting as Napa wines began to receive more international attention. Today, the state of California has over 4,600 wineries, compared to just 330 in 1975, and the Judgment of Paris is recognized as an important catalyst for the growth of Napa Valley and the entire California wine industry.

In Tuscany, the 1970s also represented a period of growth and change, when producers began selling wines made with French grapes grown along the Tuscan coast. The first Super Tuscan, Sassicaia, was released in 1971 by Mario Incisa della Rocchetta. Because the wine did not meet the DOC requirements, it was labeled vino da tavola, Italy’s lowest designation. Today, Super Tuscans are often blends of the classic Bordeaux grapes Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and they can be classified under the less restrictive Toscana IGT or Bolgheri DOC.

In the more than 40 years since the Judgment of Paris and the first vintages of Super Tuscans, Napa Valley and Tuscany have earned more international acclaim for their Bordeaux style blends. Today we are going to compare the Bordeaux style blends of these two pioneering regions to the classic wines of Bordeaux. We will look at the top producers in each region and compare the average scores and prices of the wines for the vintages 2009–2013 to see which regions offer the best value.

Toscana IGT & Bolgheri DOC: Super Tuscans

Located in coastal Tuscany, this wine region has emerged as a world-class region for producing wines with French grapes and sometimes blending them with the Italian grape Sangiovese.

For our analysis of Super Tuscans we chose the following wines:

• Le Macchiole, Messorio
• Marchesi Antinori, Tenuta Tignanello, Solaia
• Masseto
• Ornellaia
• Tenuta San Guido, Sassicaia
• Tua Rita, Redigaffi

Below is a comparison of scores of the wines for each vintage. Masseto is the top scoring wine for 3 of the 5 vintages, but generally, there are not large score disparities among the wines in each vintage.

Bordeaux

Bordeaux needs no introduction, as arguably the world’s most important wine producing region. Not only does Bordeaux produce many outstanding wines, but the châteaux produce very large quantities, making the wines more widely available for consumers worldwide. For our analysis, we chose 6 of the top rated châteaux from both the left and right bank:

• Chateau Haut Brion, Pessac-Leognan
• Chateau Lafleur, Pomerol
• Chateau Latour, Pauillac
• Chateau Margaux, Margaux
• Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Pauillac
• Petrus, Pomerol

In contrast to the Super Tuscans, there is more vintage variation among our selected Bordeaux wines. 2009 and 2010 are clearly the top performing vintages, and we can see that 2013 was a challenging vintage for Bordeaux.

Napa Valley

As the most prestigious New World wine region, Napa Valley has gained an excellent reputation for rich and powerful Cabernet Sauvignon and Bordeaux style blends. Many of today’s top producers operate on a small scale, often only selling their wine to wine club members.

In order to have a Global Wine Score, a wine needs to have at least 3 critic ratings for each vintage, therefore some smaller boutique cuvées could not be used for this analysis. For our analysis of Napa Valley, we chose these 6 wines:

• Bond Estates, Vecina Red
• Colgin Cellars, Ix Estate Red
• Dominus Estate, Christian Moueix
• Harlan Estate
• Screaming Eagle, Cabernet Sauvignon
• Schrader Cellars, Ccs Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon

With the selected Napa wines, there is a bit more variation among the wines in each vintage. The vintages as a whole are relatively consistent, except for the lower scoring 2011. Screaming Eagle is the top performing wine, earning the highest score for 4 of the 5 vintages.

Comparing Scores: Tuscany, Bordeaux & Napa Valley

Now, let’s compare the regions as a whole to see how they stack up. With only a small selection of wines, we can’t make any conclusions about which region is “the best” (and this is probably a matter of personal preference anyway), but we can still look at the data to gain some interesting insights.

Overall vintage quality plays a large role in determining wine quality, so we must consider that impact as well. The chart below, from Wine Spectator, shows the quality score of each vintage in each region:

Note: For Bordeaux, we averaged the vintage score for the right bank and left bank to get a single score for the region. Source: Wine Spectator Vintage Charts

The scale is as follows: 95–100, classic; 90–94, outstanding; 85–89, very good. As you can see, there is little vintage variation in Tuscany and Napa Valley, with the exception of 2011 (rated higher for Tuscany and lower for Napa). Bordeaux is prone to more vintage variation because of highly variable weather conditions, but we still have three vintages rated “outstanding” or better in our analysis.

The graph below shows the average Global Wine Score for each region and vintage. As you can see, the top-rated group is 2010 Bordeaux, followed closely by 2009 Bordeaux and 2013 Napa Valley.

We can also see that for each year, the highest scoring region is the region with the best vintage grade. This highlights how overall wine quality is dependent on vintage quality, and that even the top producers are affected by challenging vintages.

What about value?

To look at the relative value that each region offers, we used price data from Wine-Searcher.com. The Wine-Searcher average price represents the average retail price for a standard 750mL bottle, excluding taxes. You can find a more detailed explanation of the Wine-Searcher average price calculation on their website. The prices are in euros and represent the current market price as of the time of this post.

We took the Wine-Searcher average prices for each wine and calculated the median price of the wines in each region. We chose to use the median price due to the small sample of 6 wines per group and the wide range of prices within each region.

As you can see, Bordeaux 2009 and 2010 have much higher median prices than any other group, but they also offer the highest scores. The selected Napa Valley wines offer value compared to Bordeaux, especially for the best vintages. The excellent 2013 Napa Valley vintage has a median price of 535€ per bottle, compared to 1 122€ for the 2009 Bordeaux vintage, which has nearly the same average Global Wine Score.

However, it is easy to see on the graph that the Super Tuscans offer the best value of the three. With median prices all close to or under 200€ per bottle, this is a great region to look at for top quality wines at relatively “affordable” prices.

Final Thoughts

The wine world has changed dramatically in the 40 years since the Judgment of Paris and the release of the first Super Tuscans, but each of these regions has remained an important producer of Bordeaux style blends. We can see that Bordeaux, Napa Valley, and Tuscany are all capable of producing excellent Bordeaux style blends, each with their own unique style.

When comparing the prices in each region, we can see that the top Napa Valley wines offer relative value compared to Bordeaux, but the Super Tuscans provide the most relative value of the three regions.