In 1976 Steven Spurrier, an English wine merchant organized a blind tasting of French wines against their American counterparts, to be presented to an assembly of the elite of the French wine industry. The idea was merely to promote the upcoming American bicentennial and any absurd idea that the foreign wines could actually compare to the French was not even considered.

But the unthinkable occurred. The wines from California not only showed well, but the 1973 Chateau Montelina Chardonnay and the 1973 Stag's Leap Cabernet actually emerged as the top white and red wines of the day. Time Magazine picked up on the story and the event became a seminal moment bestowing instant credibility and forever changing the status of California wines in the global hierarchy. Needless to say, the French were not amused.

Today the top wines of France remain the benchmark against which all others are measured, but the wine industry in California was transformed almost overnight from a gaggle of cottage winemakers to a $14-billion-a-year industry.

Skip ahead almost 30 years. I was recently invited to attend a judging of wines at Brock University's Cool Climate Oenology and Viticultural Institute, a relatively new but extremely well-regarded program that was established in 1996 to train Canada's future winemakers and vineyard managers. The event was organized and presented by Brock, the Wine Judges of Canada and the Wine Stewards Commission of Ontario. In attendance was a group of 51 sommeliers, wine writers, academics and assorted industry professionals.

Sixteen wines were to be blind-tasted and judged. Twelve were Canadian, made from the traditional Bordeaux blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet Franc, and four were from "classified" Bordeaux chateaux. This "classification" dates back to 1855 when the French wine merchants of the time, who essentially ran the wine industry, established a hierarchy of the finest chateaux to be presented at the Paris Exhibition and World's Fair. Their list of 61 individual chateaux were grouped into five levels, or "crus" according to the prices they had realized over the preceding 100 years. The rationale was that the more money a wine could consistently command, the higher it should rank and to this day the only alteration to The original list was the elevation, after years of lobbying, of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild from second to first cru in 1973.

As an added challenge the Brock organizers proposed a prize for the flrst judge to correctly identify the four French wines. Most of the group seemed confident the task would be simple enough - after all, these were top French Bordeaux - a 1995 Chateau Haut-Bages-Liberal, a 1996 Chateau Lynch-Moussas, a 2000 Chateau Camensac and a 1999 Chateau Branaire-Ducru.

Like most in attendance I expected there would be some stylistic similarities, but I really expected the Bordeaux to display much more depth of character and the Canadian wines to be slightly less complex. The scoring involved a standard 100 - point system whereby one analyzes the samples according to aroma, taste and visual quality. Very quickly it became apparent the task was to be much more difficult than expected. Though one or two wines just did not stand up and a few were clearly superior there was an amazing amount of consistency across the entire flight and in the end this was reflected in my scores. As for picking out the four French wines, it had been tough but I was fairly confident I had them nailed when I submitted my picks to one of the stewards.

While the organizers tabulated the scores the judges broke for lunch. There was a pronounced buzz within a number of groups discussing their findings, comparing notes and finding there was very little agreement regarding their predictions. I also couldn't help but notice that a few participants who had initially been particularly cocky about their expectations were now conspicuously silent.

When the stewards finished crunching numbers and we were called to order to hear their findings, their first announcement was there would be no prize presented that day. Of the 35 judges who accepted the challenge none could pick out the four French wines.

The best anyone managed was two. I can take some consolation, but it really does not give me a lot of satisfaction, to report that I was one of only seven judges that managed this feat.

The results of the scoring were even more shocking. The identities of the wines were revealed in reversed order and when it came to the top five wines we realized they were all Canadian. Numbers five through two were from Henry of Pelham, Cave Springs, Stoney Ridge and Thirty Bench - all Niagara wineries. When the top-scoring wine was announced you could have heard a pin drop; the distinction belonged to none other than the 1999 Colio Estate CEV Carlo Negri Signature Cabernet Merlot from Essex County.

If you're wondering, the French wines came in sixth, seventh, eleventh and twelfth.

So what does this all prove? I think a couple of important things came to light. The first is rather obvious - Canadian wines can hold their own in some pretty lofty company and even excel. But more importantly, it shows that we, as Canadians, need to get over our inferiority complex. Even this group, who should have known better, went into the event with the preconceived idea that the French wines would prevail. Personally, I had previously tasted many of both the French and Canadian wines to be judged and even though I was aware of the quality of the Canadian entries I was still convinced the French would dominate.

Two weeks later I attended Cuvee 2005, a wine competition in Niagara that is unique because the winemakers themselves are the judges. You can imagine how highly the awards are coveted by the participants. When the winners were being announced the 2002 version of the CEV Carlo Negri Signature Cabernet/Merlot and 2002 CEV Merlot Reserve both won top honours in their categories and Carlo himself was presented with the prestigious Tony Aspler Award of Excellence - sort of like an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. When he received the awards, Carlo, in his characteristically humble manner, declined to make an acceptance speech.

I guess sometimes the wines simply speak for themselves. It's high time we started listening!

www.littlefatwino.com