Are the French starting to realize that the US makes great wine?

(FoxNews) - Araujo Estate Wines, in Calistoga, Calif., is a fabulous cult winery that produces about 2,000 cases of cabernet sauvignon annually.  In July it was announced that it had been sold to the family of French businessman Francois Pinault through their Artemis Group holding company.

This a huge deal. Why?

Because the French are still so hesitant to admit the U.S. is making great wine.  Even after the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, a.k.a. Judgment of Paris. (Watch Bottle Shock here if you don’t know what I’m talking about, to get a pretty good recap of what happened).

In a nutshell, it was a wine competition organized in Paris on May 24, 1976 by Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant. He gathered famous French judges and carried out two blind tastings: one of Chardonnays and another of reds (Bordeaux wines from France and Cabernet Sauvignon wines from California).   

And shocker! A California wine rated best in each category, which blew the minds of the French because the France was generally regarded as being the foremost producer of the world's best wines.

Still, we didn’t get much respect.  Then in 1979, came the famous Opus One -- the result of a wine collaboration between the Robert Mondavi’s son Timothy in Oakville, Calif. and Bordeaux's Château Mouton Rothschild winemaker Lucien Sionneau.