The most significant news story ever written about wine was just four paragraphs long, condensed from a 2,000-word fact file sent by a reporter who had never written about wine before.

On June 7, 1976, Time magazine carried the four paragraphs under the headline "Judgment of Paris" as the second story in its Modern Living section, after an item about a new theme park in Atlanta.

"It was filler. It didn't even have a photo," says the writer, George M. Taber, who visited Auction Napa Valley earlier this month to promote a book due this fall, "Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine" (Schibner; $25).

The cover story of that issue of Time was about a scandal involving cheating on tests at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The academy subsequently changed its honor code, and that story has been long forgotten by most people.

Meanwhile, Taber's news brief -- about French judges choosing a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Chardonnay from Napa Valley as superior to the best from their mother country in a blind tasting in Paris -- continues to have impact around the wine world.

"It is amazing that after 30 years, people are still talking about the Paris tasting," says Warren Winiarski, owner of Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, which won the red wine category. "Even at this late date, the French still find it too painful to write about."

Enophiles now acknowledge that great wine can come from almost anywhere - - Italy, Spain, New Zealand or any place with the right weather for grape growing. In 1976, that was heresy. Most people believed that only France had the proper terroir -- the combination of microclimate and soil -- to make truly great wines.

"Before the Paris tasting, the French could always say, terroir, terroir, terroir," says Mike Grgich, winemaker of the Napa Valley Chardonnay that finished first among white wines. "After the Paris tasting, we learned there are good soils everywhere -- California, Australia, Chile."

Steven Spurrier, an Englishman who owned a wine shop in Paris that catered to the English-speaking expatriate community, was able to line up some of France's most-respected wine authorities to judge his Paris tasting, but no journalists other than Taber attended.

Taber, fluent in French and one of two reporters in Time's Paris bureau, says he didn't plan to go because he was sure the French would win. But he was pestered by Patricia Gallagher, an American who worked at Spurrier's shop and had taught Taber a wine-appreciation course a few weeks earlier.

"If it wasn't George, who could understand French perfectly and knew the mistakes (the judges) were making, the story might never have been anything," says Winiarski.

As is common at tastings, the whites -- California Chardonnays and white Burgundies made from Chardonnay -- were tasted first, followed by the reds, in this case California Cabernet Sauvignons and Bordeaux wines based mostly on Cab.

Taber's first inkling that something unusual was going on came halfway through the white-wine tasting, when the judges couldn't immediately say which wines were from California. As the only journalist there, he was allowed to roam among the judges. He also had a list of what they were blind-tasting, so he captured the story's still-embarrassing quotes.

"That is definitely California. It has no nose," one judge said of a 1973 Batard Montrachet from Burgundy.

Raymond Oliver, described by Taber as the doyen of French culinary writers, exclaimed, "Ah, back to France!" as he happily sipped a Chardonnay from Napa Valley's Freemark Abbey winery.

Originally, Spurrier had planned to release the red and white results together at the end of the day, but the organizers were pressing to finish before a wedding reception took over the room, so they released the white results early. The 1973 Chateau Montelena Napa Valley Chardonnay was announced as the winner.

"People were just shocked," says Taber, who was born in Riverdale (Fresno County) and grew up in Los Angeles. "I felt a sense of pride. Kind of like, 'Hey, we won.' I don't think I would have had that same sense if I hadn't been from California."

Later, the red wine results were announced. That category was won by the 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars S.L.V. Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, beating four grand cru reds from Bordeaux.

"What actually happened at the Paris tasting was that the lover of wine was given an opportunity to taste wine without a predetermined hierarchy," says Stag's Leap's Winiarski, 77. "It was no longer the sacred soils of France were at the top and everyone else was below it."

The reverberations were immediate, particularly in Napa Valley, which saw a real-estate and winemaking boom.

"Time magazine called me from New York (in 1976) and said they wanted to interview me," says Grgich, 82, who now owns Grgich Hills winery in Rutherford. "I said, 'For what? What did I do wrong?' "

All over the world, winemakers and winery owners set new, higher goals for their products.

"Before the Paris tasting, France was on a pedestal and everybody else was making plonk," Taber says.

Yet Taber, who specialized in writing about business, says he didn't notice the impact of his four paragraphs for two decades. Today, his notes for the story are in the Smithsonian Institution, along with the winemaking notes of Winiarski and Grgich.

Taber left Time in 1988 to start a business newspaper in New Jersey. He was invited to Napa Valley on the 20th anniversary of the Paris tasting. That's when he learned how important his four paragraphs had been. Indeed, people are still talking about it.

"I was at Mondavi today, and they were talking about it like it was Geraldo Rivera. The tasting room guy said a fistfight broke out after the results. It was nothing like that," Taber says.

On the other side of the Atlantic, even 29 years after the event, "The French were saying, 'We've been tricked,' " says Taber, 63. "I interviewed six of the nine judges after the event. They knew exactly what had happened. I wrote the book to set the record straight.

"I've interviewed presidents of France. I've interviewed presidents of the United States, but the story that I did that will go down in history is the Paris tasting."

Not bad for a wine-writing rookie.

E-mail W. Blake Gray at wbgray@sfchronicle.com.

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The story behind the story that made wine history