USA

United States

To the French, Napa Valley was for a long time simply the challenger. Then came 1976, and a blind tasting in Paris at which California beat the great names of Bordeaux — and after that day we had no choice but to admit it: real greatness lives here too.

California's unstinting sunshine gives Cabernet Sauvignon its concentrated fruit and its velvet tannins. And yet what the winemakers here revere is French tradition.

The spirit of the Old World, the soil of the New. Napa Valley is the masterpiece born of that happy meeting.