Until the early 1960s, Napa Valley was a remote and unremarkable area of Northern California. Historic wineries that had flourished before Prohibition had been abandoned and left to rot.

Winemaker Robert Mondavi began to change that when he opened his eponymous winery in 1966 and soon other pioneers in the wine industry joined him.

They launched independently of each other but worked together to transform this sleepy valley into the epicenter of American wine.

It led to the Paris Wine Tasting of 1975 – also known as the Judgement of Paris – when French oenophiles participated in blind tastings set up by Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant, and his colleague Patricia Gastaud-Gallagher, a director at the Academie du Vin.

France was generally regarded as being the foremost producer of the world's best wines at the time, but eleven judges were asked to rank California Chardonnays v Burgundy Chardonnays and California Cabernet Sauvignon v Bordeaux.

The French judges deemed Napa Valley wines superior to the French ones and the victory (although the French tried to keep it secret) made headlines worldwide and catapulted the California wine industry to its current success.

Those wineries that put Napa Valley on the global stage were nicknamed the Class of ’72 – the year many of them opened – and you can see some of them on this 1970s map of Napa Valley Wineries.

It was the front cover of a 17-page wine list at the fine dining restaurant Jake’s in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. Founded by Jake Replogie snr and his wife Karen, the restaurant opened in 1960 in Wauwatosa and then relocated to an old barn on a family farm in Pewaukee in 1967.

The blurb on this wine list references the Judgement of Paris and says: ‘California wines will someday rival the great French Chateaus. This is no idle statement. It was done recently and will be done again.’

The California wines offered at Jake’s, the blurb continues, are ‘equal and occasionally better than their European counterparts.’

It went on to say that since wine, especially American wine, should become an integral part of the American meal, prices were not prohibitive for those unused to drinking wine. The mark-up on a bottle of wine was 100 per cent, to account for costs and make room for some profit, compared to 125 to 200 per cent mark-ups elsewhere

The cheapest bottle of wine was $4.50 and the most expensive $15.50 (this was the 1970s.)

Jake’s was run until recently by Jake Replogie Jnr but, after more than 60 years, it has closed.