Original Release Date: 18 January 2008
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Tagline: Based on a true story of love, victory and fermentation.
Filming Locations:
- Buena Vista Vinyards - 18000 Old Winery Road, Sonoma, California, USA
- Calistoga, Napa Valley, California, USA
- Chateau Montelena - 1429 Tubbs Lane, Calistoga, Napa Valley, California, USA
- Kunde Estate Winery & Vineyards - 10155 Sonoma Highway, Kenwood, California, USA
- Napa, Napa Valley, California, USA
- Santa Rosa, California, USA (interior)
- Sonoma, California, USA
Company:
- Shocking Bottle
- Intellectual Properties Worldwide (I)
- Unclaimed Freight Productions
- Zin Haze Productions
Plot Summary
Sommelier and wine shop owner Steven Spurrier, a British expatriate living
in Paris, concocts a plan to hold a blind taste-test intended to introduce
Parisians to the quality wines coming from elsewhere in the world (and save
his business in the process). He travels to the not-yet-famous Napa Valley
in search of contestants for his Judgment of Paris taste test, where a chance
meeting introduces him to floundering vintner Jim Barrett of Chateau Montelena.
Barrett wants no part in the competition, believing it is all a set-up designed
by the French to humiliate New World wine producers. However Barrett's son,
Bo, secretly passes Spurrier a couple of bottles of the Chateau's chardonnay
for the competition. The chardonnay, however, has turned brown in the bottles,
causing Barrett Sr. to call for the whole vintage to be carted away for dumping.
But Bo discovers the brown color is only temporary and manages to recover
the vintage with the help of a local bar owner, who had intercepted the bottles
on the way to the dump. Bo is then asked to travel to Paris to represent the
Napa valley vintners in the wine contest. After tallying the scores from the
eight Parisian judges, Spurrier is shocked to find that Montelena has won
the chardonnay competition. The report is featured in an article of Time and
restaurants all around America are asked continuously for the wine (Chateau
Montelena Chardonnay 1973) and forced to admit that they don't have it. This
twist of fate and the resultant oenological epiphany forever changes the fortunes
of Napa Valley wineries and the global wine industry as a whole, as it is
revealed that French wines are in fact not unbeatable, prompting vintners
world wide to attempt fine wine production. In the end, the futures of the
characters are revealed. Jim Barrett still makes wine at 81 at the time of
this film's release, although Bo now runs the Chateau. A bottle of Montelena
Chardonnay 1973 and the red wine, Stags Leap, also from California, that had
won the same competition were given a case at the Smithsonian Institute. In
2006, thirty years after the first competition Steven Spurrier hosted another
contest, this time with full confidence that French wine would win. California
won again.
Facts & Trivia
Goofs
Continuity: When Sam, Gustavo and Bo are encountering the big truck driver,
Sam's off the shoulder top changes position from shot to shot.
Continuity: In the scene where Gustavo pours some of his red wine into
a water glass and tells Bo, several times, "try it", the level
of wine in the glass is constantly changing, from nearly full to only a
sip, even before Bo drinks any of the wine.
Audio/visual unsynchronized: While Bo and Sam are kissing before Bo leaves
for France, she's holding his face while two wisps of hair droop down on
his right side. When the camera films to show her face, all his hair is
pushed back by her hands.
Quotes
[first lines]
Bo Barrett: [voice-over during a vineyard pan] It wasn't
always like this. Before Paris, people didn't drink our wine. I mean, my
friends did. But you could hardly consider their palates discerning...
Bo Barrett: Hell, we were farmers... sort of...
[pan to empty bottles of Montelena label and several early twenties/late
teens smoking hookah]
Media Downloads
"Moscow"
