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People in Wine · Chardonnay & a transatlantic wine story
Miljenko “Mike” Grgich
Mike Grgich made the 1973 Château Montelena Chardonnay that topped the white-wine flight at the 1976 Paris tasting, then helped establish a winery of his own.
A closer look · Chardonnay & a transatlantic wine story
The quick profile
- Connection
- Chardonnay & a transatlantic wine story
- Where to begin
- Croatia & Napa Valley, California
- A useful time marker
- 1973 wine · 1976 tasting · 1977 winery
The winemaker behind a famous bottle
Miljenko “Mike” Grgich was the winemaker behind Château Montelena’s 1973 Chardonnay, which ranked first among the white wines in the 1976 Paris tasting. Grgich Hills Estate’s timeline records the event and the following year’s groundbreaking with Austin Hills in Rutherford. The story joins a particular bottle to a much longer working life.
Keep the wine and the event together
The result tells us what happened in that tasting. It does not establish that all California wine outranks all French wine. Nor does the vintage date mean the competition happened in 1973. Keeping those distinctions clear makes the achievement easier to understand and more interesting to explore.
A bottle can lead in several directions
Start with the person and you can follow the wine to Chardonnay, to Napa Valley, to the tasting itself or to Grgich Hills. Each route asks something different: who made it, what grew, where it came from, how it was judged and what came next. This is the pleasure of a discovery collection: one name opens several doors.
Three things to notice
- A wine’s vintage and the year it is tasted can be different.
- The winning Chardonnay belonged to Château Montelena, not the later Grgich Hills winery.
- A tasting result is tied to its participants, conditions and scoring.
A few milestones
- 1973: Vintage of the Château Montelena Chardonnay.
- 1976: The wine tops the Paris tasting’s white-wine flight.
- 1977: Mike Grgich and Austin Hills begin their Rutherford winery.
Try a little discovery
Read The Judgment of Paris guide and make a four-part card: producer, grape, vintage and event date. Then add the winemaker’s name. See how much more precise the story becomes when each fact has its own place.
A few questions worth uncorking
Was the 1973 winning wine a Grgich Hills Chardonnay?
No. It was Château Montelena Chardonnay. Grgich Hills began in 1977.
Did one tasting settle the quality of entire countries?
No. It challenged expectations through the wines presented at that event; it was not a permanent ranking of national wine production.
Follow the connections
Follow the person into a place, grape, style or method. Explore the Wineries collection for the producers, places and methods connected with these stories.
Meet another person in wine
Follow the story into a winery
Behind this introduction
Sources checked 15 October 2026. Producer and personal accounts provide useful first-hand context and are identified below. The discovery questions and graphic are editorial interpretations.