George M. Taber, the author of Judgment of Paris:
 California vs. France and the 1976 Paris Tasting that
 Revolutionized Wine, has interviewed presidents,
 dictators, corporate tycoons and even the Beatles in a
 journalism career that lasted more than 40 years. But
 the most important event he ever covered was a wine
 tasting in Paris in 1976. Nine eminent French wine
 experts in a blind tasting selected in both the red
 wine and the white wine competition unknown California
 wines as better than the best French wines. It turned
 out to be the turning point in the history of
 California wine and launched the globalization of wine
 that we know today. Food critic Anthony Dias Blue
 called the event “the most talked about wine tasting
 of the [20th] century.”

 	At the time Taber was a Paris correspondent for Time
 magazine, and he was the only journalist at the event,
 which was staged by an Englishman who owned a wine
 store and school in Paris. It was Taber's story in
 Time that broke the news to the world and caused
 oenophiles around the world to take their first
 serious look at California wines.
 
 	Taber spent 21 years at Time as a reporter, writer
 and editor. He had assignments for Time in New York,
 Bonn, Paris, Houston and Washington, D.C. before being
 named a senior editor at the magazine. For six years
 he was Time's business editor and was later editor of
 the World section. In 1988, Taber left Time to start
 NJBIZ, a weekly newspaper that covers New Jersey
 business. He sold the paper in 2005. 

 	A Californian by birth, which gave him his first
 interest in wine, Taber graduated from Georgetown
 University and got a masters degree from the College
 of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. He now lives on Block
 Island, Rhode Island with his wife Jean.