PARC Aspen’s Tasting of Aspen Will Establish This City as an American Wine-Centric Player
In the world of wine – especially in the circle of wine aficionados and geeks – something called the Tasting of Paris was the signal moment that cemented California wine’s place in the pantheon of worldwide wine. The Tasting of Aspen won’t in the end, attain that stratosphere of wine immortality. But it likely will establish Aspen as an important destination as an American wine-centric player.
Taking place at the PARC Aspen on March 20, the restaurant’s master sommelier, Jonathan Pullis, will lead 10 wine enthusiasts – all of whom he characterizes as “Francophiles” – to partake in his version of that Paris tasting – The Tasting of Aspen.
May of 2026 will mark the 50th anniversary of that day in Paris when to the utter astonishment and dismay of the Francophiles who were in the room where it happened, several California wines from Napa Valley and Sonoma – walked away with the top scores. Those wines were put up against some of the greatest wines France had to offer and the results favoring the Americans, established California as one of the great wine-producing regions in the world. Mon dieu!
The PARC Aspen version will put participants through three flights (rounds) of tastings, pitting French White Burgundy v. California Chardonnay (the latter, the facsimile of white Burgundy wines), Red Burgundy v. California Pinot Noir (ditto), and Red Bordeaux v. California Cabernet, blended with its other indigenous red grapes (ditto).
Pullis would not reveal to me the wines he will be pouring that day, so as not to tip the provenance of the wines – just as the Paris tasting was conducted. The wines now and then, were tasted “blind,” he says emphatically. That is, the labels will be concealed so as not to prejudice the judges. But he assures me, “All the wines will be world class; comparable in quality, and some even better than what was tasted in Paris.”
But PARC Aspen did share with me the menu that will be served that night – after the initial tasting sans food – and then in conjunction with the cuisine, which on paper seems to be finely augmented to both enhance the wine as well as the food.
To start, seared sea scallops will be paired with the White Burgundies and Cali Chards. This course is intended to heighten the wines and will be served with curried lentils and a coconut emulsion and apple and Maitake “cigarillos”. The next offering may be intended to be paired with the Red Burgundy/California Pinots, but it could go either way with the aforementioned white wines in the mix. That amalgam will feature sweetbread lasagna with Morels and sour cherry (the latter envisioned, my guess, to light up the Red Burgundies & Pinots).
The third course will feature a ribeye cap and a New York strip with pureed potatoes, roasted carrots and something called Foyot sauce, a variation on a bearnaise.
The very French cheese course will bring up the rear.
Pullis sums up the event thusly: “It’s to differentiate the difference [of the wines] and also to have some surprises. Everyone attending this dinner is a Francophile (which was exactly how it was in Paris on May 24, 1976). We all have our implicit biases and expectations. It’ll be interesting to see if our expectations meet the actuality."
“It will be awesome to surprise people and (perhaps) not meet their expectations. It’s really good to challenge people’s preconceived biases. That’s why we blind taste. And that’s why having the wines tasted side-by-side, the differences will become more apparent.”
Alan Goldfarb is a longtime wine journalist. His work has appeared in the Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Decanter, Alta Journal among many others; and he’s interviewed Robert Mondavi, Francis Ford Coppola, Joan Baez, Daniel Ellsberg, and Rupert Murdoch among hundreds of others.