By Ada Brunstein

On November 7, during a historic election week, in a historic city, amid the lingering threat of another depression, 13 people sat in what used to be the manager’s quarters of the U.S. Trust Bank and drank a historic wine.

The Seafood Room of the Oceanaire restaurant at 40 Court Street is an intimate room in what is otherwise a grand building. The high ceilings, pillars, and oversized ceramic vases would evoke opulence even without this building’s impressive pedigree.

But the carefully preserved signs of the building’s past life remind us that it’s part of something bigger than itself. The words United States Trust Company can still be seen on the front of the building. The marbled entrance to the old vault is visible from the waiting area. And in the manager’s quarters, old metal valves hang in the corner below the large fish hanging high on the walls.

In that room, the bank’s manager might have sighed a Great Depression sigh, whose ghost wafted through the room even as we were savoring a delectable meal.

The Oceanaire’s gracious manager, John Szymanski, arranged this decadent evening in part “to offer the customers value during these economic times.” And indeed the $65 price of the evening would normally not have covered even one of the bottles (the Cask 23 goes for $175) let alone five courses and five pairings.

Chef Dan Enos created the hearty seasonal menu. Prociutto-wrapped shrimp, sherried lobster bisque, pan-seared scallop salad, lamb chops and the mother of all chocolate espresso tortes paired with a Grappa Tignanello, Antinori.

Carol Fuccione was the representative of Ste Michelle Wine Estates, whose Stag’s Leap wines we were sampling, with her guidance: the 2007 Sauvignon Blanc, the “Karia” 2006 Chardonnay, the 2005 Merlot.

And finally, during the lamb, the much anticipated history-making wine.

In 1976 in France, at an event called the Judgment of Paris, wine experts conducted a blind tasting of French and Californian wines. There was an unambiguous underdog -- California -- in this competition, which means the French probably didn’t even break a sweat. They had the Loire, they had Burgundy, they had Bordeaux. What could possibly go wrong?

The answer, depending on your version of “wrong” in this story, was the Stag’s Leap 1973 Cask 23 Cabernet Sauvignon.  This Napa Valley vintage stole the show and won first place. It’s one of two bottles exhibited in the Smithsonian museum. (The other, a Chardonnay also from Napa, won the competition for white wines.)

At the Oceanaire we tasted the 2004 vintage of Cask 23.

I could at this point talk about the berry and the vanilla and the hint of chocolate in the wine, but somehow that wouldn’t capture its distinctiveness.  This is a wine that warms the palate and frees the mind. I wanted to sink back in my chair and imagine this wine on the lips of those judges in Paris 32 years ago. I imagined each of them sinking back in their chairs and I wondered where the wine took them.

History is made in triumphs and defeats. It’s easy to believe that this wine changed public opinion and put Napa Valley on the wine map.

In Paris in 1976, Napa trumped Bordeaux.

Here in Boston we triumphed over the British.

This week we elected the first African American president and whatever your political leanings, it’s worth pausing to celebrate triumphs of the underdogs.