The film Bottle Shock, which was released in September, purports to tell the story of the real-life1976 Paris wine-tasting, known as the Judgement of Paris, in which Californian wines beat French rivals, sending shock waves through the wine industry. Yet it has left something of a sour taste in the mouths of those involved in the actual event. The Paris tasting has emerged as one of the most important tastings in the history of wine. It was really what put California on the fine-wines map.
Bottle Shock is one of two films inspired by the 2005 book The Judgement of Paris, by George Taber, the only journalist to cover the landmark event, at which a mainly French panel of experts rated then-unknown Californian wines higher than the best Bordeaux had to offer. Bottle Shock is the first of the two films to be released, but it isn’t the official version. According to Steven Spurrier, who organised the Paris tasting and who is played by Alan Rickman in the film, and also to Taber, the film departs so far from reality that it should not be advertised as a true story. “It’s a tissue of lies. I’ve heard the only good part is Alan Rickman,” said Spurrier, now a wine writer and consultant based in London. He based his view on a reading of the script. “What I really hope will happen is that the true story will come out.”
Bottle Shock takes numerous egregious liberties, claim its detractors, including a broad-stroke mischaracterisation of Spurrier as a bumbling British snob with a failing wine-shop. In reality, Spurrier joined the wine trade in 1964 and moved to Paris in 1970, where he opened L’Academie du Vin, France’s first private wine-school. “The portrait of Steven Spurrier is an outrage, and not at all what he is really like,” George Taber told the press. “He comes across as a Colonel Blimp with a glass of Bordeaux in his hand. I guess I’m too naïve about Hollywood, but I don’t think any artists should destroy someone just to get some cheap laughs.”
An even bigger point of contention is the film’s portrayal of the men behind the highest-ranked white wine of the tasting, a Chateau Montelena 1973 Chardonnay from California. No mention is made of the estate’s wine-maker Mike Grgich, with the film focussing instead on Jim Barrett, the mostly hands-off part-owner of Chateau Montelena, and his son Bo. “To claim Barrett made that wine is incorrect. Grgich made it,” Taber said. “Aside from drinking it and appreciating it, Barrett didn’t know anything about wine. Mike Grgich got the George Orwell treatment and became a non-person.” Grgich, now 84 and a well-respected wine-maker, fell out with Barrett long ago. He recently told Decanter magazine that he “was pushed aside”.
Spurrier and Taber are hoping that the truth will out by way of a rival script, as yet unproduced, by screenwriter Robert Kamen. “These people make believe that Barrett made the wine – to deny Mke Grgich his rightful place in history, says Kamen, who also owns the Kamen wine estate in Sonoma Valley, California. “If you look at the wine as an act of creation, you give credit to the person who created it. So the movie is based on a lie – financed and fronted by the Barretts, a 30-year campaign to erase Mike Grgich’s name from history. I find that particularly offensive, even though it’s a crappy film.”