Whether you are sipping a glass of Chardonnay under the fireworks or savouring a Cabernet Sauvignon, may your day be filled with good company, great wine and a toast to the legacy of Miljenko Mike Grgich, the Grgich & Hills Estate winery posted on LinkedIn to mark Independence Day, which Americans celebrate on 4 July. On that very day, but 48 years ago, Mike Grgich founded the Grgich Hills Estate winery in California with his partner Austin Hills. I will remember the diminutive man from the village of Desne in the Neretva region for the only wine to which I ever awarded 100 points at a judging. 
Brilliant! Multi-layered, elegant, refined, unique. A wine for meditation… That was the brief but clear shared verdict of five judges in 2016, after a blind tasting of the Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 Estate Grown Grgich Hills, from the Californian winery of Miljenko Grgić. The average score was 99 points: another perfect hundred, two 99s and a 98. He made his name around the world back in 1976, when his Chateau Montelena Chardonnay 1973 bested the finest French wines in Paris at the celebrated tasting known as the Judgment of Paris. The French experts declared that Chardonnay, along with the likewise Californian Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon 1973, superior to the Burgundies and Bordeaux. A bottle of the Chateau Montelena Chardonnay 1973 now resides in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, among the exhibits that made American history. 
Mike Grgich left us on 13 December 2023, in his 101st year. We published the story of his life to mark his 100th birthday, which he celebrated on 1 April 2023. Read it here…
Photographs: Grgich Hills Estate, Ivo Kozarčanin
06.07.2025.
