French wine is put to shame in true-life US movie
October 7, 2008
Film portrays Judgment of Paris that sparked repercussions still felt in French wine world
No accounting for taste? Tell that to French vintners who were upset and judges who were duped and shocked by a Napa Valley wine that won a prestigious wine competition in France. Now a recently-released US-produced film tells the tale of the early days of California wine-making featuring the now infamous, blind Paris wine tasting of 1976 that has come to be known as “Judgment of Paris”.
Bottle Shock depicts the true story of upstart California vintner Chateau Montelena’s victory over French wines in the 1976 Judgment in Paris competition. While compared –often unfavorably in reviews — to the critically acclaimed wine-themed movie Sideways, Bottle Shock could be the oenophile equivalent to sports underdog movies.
In 1976 British wine merchant Spurrier (played by veteran actor Alan Rickman in the film) traveled to Napa, California to see, and taste, what he might bring back with him to Paris and a wine-tasting event, pitting the celebrated French labels against the Napa Valley newcomers. The tasting was blind; the judges were French; the winner was a chardonnay produced by residents of Calistoga, California. Suddenly, California wine was a joke no longer.
While the film is humorous, French pride over their wines and the fervor of some farmers and winemakers to protect their livelihood is no laughing matter. The resurgence of wines outside of France that was launched in 1976 has paved the way for World Wine and the swift and steady decline of the French wine industry and way of life. This process may have led French winemakers in the Languedoc-Roussillon this past July to plot to bomb the local stop on the Tour de France.
What really is at stake here is the French concept of terroir, one of those rare words for which there is no real translation but refers in this case to a patch of ground capable of producing a unique, inimitable agricultural product. So, during ‘The Judgment of Paris’, when the French critics praised a wine they claimed to recognize as an inimitable product of exquisite French dirt but was actually a California chardonnay, it caused an Emperor’s-new-clothes style uproar in France and around the world, where France had long held a stranglehold on the position of top wine producer. Nothing has been the same since. Once it was established that good wines could be produced outside of France, not only Calfironia but Australia, Chile, Argentina and others began to get into the act, and now all compete for the same palates.
Another movie on the same subject, reportly to star Keanu Reeves as the American winemaker in the story, is allegedly already in pre-production. Its title: The Judgement of Paris.
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