The iconic Napa Valley welcome signs greet visitors as they enter the valley from the north and south. Photo provided to China Daily

It was a decision that shook the wine industry: a panel of judges in Paris declaring in effect that France's wines were not the world leaders they were cracked up to be.

In fact, several of the country's finest wines had been eclipsed by unheralded drops from California's upstart wine industry, including two from Napa Valley, 120 kilometers north of San Francisco.

Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of that wine tasting, which has since taken on an almost mythical air, being called the Judgment of Paris, and becoming the subject of at least one book and two feature films. The results of that blind tasting, presided over by a panel of highly respected judges and subject to much controversy, were reported in Time magazine on June 7, 1976, and summarily dismissed as nonsense by many in the French wine industry.

It marked a turning point in the California wineries' efforts to be taken seriously, and in the nearly four decades since that competition, those US vintages have built a solid reputation.