Impressions of the legendary paris tasting of 1976 are coming to theaters in 2008.
In hindsight, it’s easy to understand why the sound of wine corks being popped at the legendary Judgment of Paris (which took place on May 24, 1976) is commonly compared by the California wine industry to the quintessential “shots heard ’round the world.” Unfortunately, not many people were listening when it happened.
In fact, it wasn’t meant to happen at all. Instead, British wine merchant Steven Spurrier, who organized the tasting, was trying to get recognition for his own expertise and promote his wine shop. The French wine critics who were invited to judge the wines were chomping at the bit to once again prove the dominance of wines made by top producers from Bordeaux and Burgundy over underdog brands from California. And the California producers brave enough to send their wines across the ocean to be scrutinized were probably sleeping peacefully.
It wasn’t until the unveiling of the winning wines the following day that the reality hit home. On that late spring day in Paris, the astute panel of experts was informed that the red and white wines they had chosen as the world’s finest were not from France. Instead, they were a 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay and a 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon—both from Napa Valley.
As luck would have it, the only journalist to attend this legendary event was George M. Taber, an American correspondent for Time magazine who was assigned to the magazine’s Paris office. But like the French writers who afterward pooh-poohed the event, he, too, admits he was rather skeptical of the tasting’s theme when he first received an invitation. “This appeared to be just another non-event; it seemed almost absurd to compare the best French wines with California unknowns,” he wrote in Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine (Scribner, 2005).
Despite his initial misgivings (he turned down the first invitation), Taber did indeed attend the two-day event after a little persuasion from Spurrier’s assistant Patricia Gallagher. And his short-but-concise story, published in the Modern Living section of Time magazine’s June 6, 1976 issue, informed consumers that California wines could compete with the best in the world. Twenty years later, Taber wrote his rich and very detailed book focusing on the people and events that led up to the historic tasting, and on its profound impact on the global wine market.
Taber says the inspiration to write the book came at the 20-year anniversary party of the event in 1996, which he had been invited to by Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ winemaker Warren Winiarski. “It was there, amid a mass assemblage of enthusiastic winemakers and other dignitaries from the California wine community,” he remembers, “that I finally began to grasp the true sense of spirit generated by the Paris Tasting. It sparked and directly impacted the lives of individuals who were striving to make wines that could compete with the best in the world.”
Celluloid commerce
Today, this sense of “spirit” has continued to gain momentum. As a result, two movies are currently being made that focus on the dreams and inspirations that led to the making of the winning Napa Valley wines and the showdown in Paris that made them famous.
The first is “Bottle Shock,” an independent film loosely based on the characters working at Chateau Montelena and events that took place at the winery prior to the Paris event. The film is being directed, producer and edited by Randall Miller (“Nobel Son,” “Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School”); he and his wife, Jody Savin wrote the script based on an original screenplay by Ross Schwatrz. The film stars, among others, Bill Pullman (“Igby Goes Down,” “Zero Effect,” “Lost Highway,” “The Last Seduction”) as real-life winery owner Jim Barrett; Chris Pine (“Smokin’ Aces,” “Blind Dating”) as his rebellious son, Bo; Alan Rickman (“Rasputin,” “Dogma,” “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and the ruthless wizard Severus Snape in “Harry Potter” films) as Spurrier, and Freddy Rodriguez (“Grindhouse,” “Lady on the Water,” “A Walk in the Clouds,” and mortician Federico Diaz in HBO’s “Six Feet Under”) as the young Gustavo Brambila.
Miljenko (Mike) Grgich, the winemaker responsible for handcrafting the famed Chateau Montelena 1973 Chardonnay that won over the elite producers of White Burgundy, is seen for only a brief moment in the movie and has no lines. Therefore, to create extra layers of drama, conflict and resolution—to make the film more fun and enjoyable to a wide range of viewers—fictional characters have been added to the storyline.
Sonoma resident Brenda Lhormer, one of the film’s producers, says the idea is to make an exciting story that’s upbeat and positive. “I like to think of it as a classic underdog tale,’” she says. “It’s a spirited film that looks at the time period and the close-knit wine community that rallied around the accomplishments at the famous tasting in Paris.”
Filming for the movie began August 1 and wrapped September 6. Along with scenes filmed at Chateau Montelena, other locations include Buena Vista, Kunde Estate and smaller sites in Sonoma, Glen Ellen and Santa Rosa. The movie is currently in editing, and producers are seeking a distribution deal. Plans are already underway to submit the finished film to the Sundance Film Festival next spring, with hopes of a theatrical release sometime in 2008.
The second movie, “Judgment of Paris,” is a much more serious-yet-amiable film based on Taber’s book and the real-life stories of Spurrier, Warren Winiarski (the original winemaker and owner of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars), Grgich and other important players. The story is being adapted for film by veteran screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen, whose credits include the “The Professional, “Taps,” “The Karate Kid,” “Fifth Element,” “A Walk in the Clouds” and a new film, “Taken,” which will star Liam Neeson.
Kamen, who’s been growing grapes for 26 years and bottles his own line of top-notch Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah in the mountains above Sonoma, says he intends to craft an intriguing and intelligent script that can entertain and educate fans of wine and movie buffs at the same time. “The idea is to go beyond the wonders of the historic Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay that won the Paris tasting to create a movie that can make world-class wines less of a mystery and more comprehensible to all consumers,” he says. “The film will focus on the men who made the historic wines, Warren Winiarski and Mike Grgich…and, of course, Steve Spurrier, who organized the event.”
Along with Kamen, the film’s other producers are Elizabeth Fowler and Clark Peterson (“Monster,” “East of Havana”). Fowler says the team was inspired to make the film based on the layers of intriguing characters in Taber’s book. “Personally, what I find so magical about the story is the way the main characters were following their dreams so earnestly,” she says.
“For Spurrier, it’s about creating a life for himself and getting recognition for his love of wine by staging such a memorable wine tasting. In the case of Winiarski and Grgich, it’s about two men whose financial success was second to their passion for making the best possible wines. It’s like kismet—a deep and rather fascinating connection between these men—that we intend to showcase on the big screen.”
Filming of “Judgment of Paris” is scheduled to begin early next year in Napa Valley and Sonoma County. According to Fowler, the film is slated for release in late 2008. Hollywood names currently being tossed around as possible cast members include Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant, Jude Law and Keanu Reeves.
Taber, whose intriguing new book, To Cork or Not to Cork: Tradition, Romance, Sciene and the Battle for the Wine Botttle, is due out in early October, isn’t surprised by the interest in adapting these close-knit stories to the big screen. “When you add together the underlying scenarios of rags to riches, United States versus France and underdogs beating the big kids at their own game, you really have enough subplots to teach viewers about one of the most monumental occasions in wine history,” he says.
In short, the true core of this legendary tale was not set by a wealthy lawyer (Barrett) or wine shop owner (Spurrier), but instead by two dreamers who arrived in Napa Valley more than 40 years ago and were driven by passion and a shared urge to make some of the finest wines the world has ever known.
Leap of faith
Warren Winiarski’s passion for wine began as a graduate student living in Italy in 1953. After returning to the states, he eventually gave up his job as a lecturer at the University of Chicago and moved his family to the Napa Valley in the summer of 1964 to pursue his dream of an agrarian lifestyle focused on food and wine.
Arriving with only $300 in his pocket, starting a winery wasn’t part of Winiarski’s original plan. But that focus changed once he began learning vineyard and winemaking skills from three legendary winemakers: Lee Stewart of the original Chateau Souverain on Howell Mountain, André Tchelistcheff of Beaulieu Vineyards, and Robert Mondavi, who began his own winery in the mid-1960s.
After purchasing a parcel of land on Howell Mountain in 1965, Winiarski planted his first vineyard the following year. On the side, he tasted as many wines as possible to search for flavor profiles similar to those of Bordeaux. It was during this important learning process that he discovered Nathan Fay’s 1968 Cabernet Sauvignon, a homemade wine crafted with grapes grown in the Stag’s Leap District of Napa Valley.
“When I tasted Nathan’s wine from 1968, it seemed so great,” recalls the now 79-year-old Winiarski. “There was something so unique about the balance, the unique flavors, the complex qualities, the tannins, the texture and the grip it had on the palate. It was at that point I began to realize the real paragon of virtues to be found in that particular vineyard.”
To develop a comparable flavor profile, in 1970, Winiarski and a group of investors purchased a 45-acre parcel of property with plum trees and Alicante Bouschet and Petite Sirah vines next to the Fay vineyard. After immediately planting Cabernet Sauvignon vines on the property, the first commercial crop used to make the legendary wine was harvested in 1973.
Asked how he selected the young red wine to enter the Paris tasting, Winiarski says he was simply trying to get exposure for the winery when he accepted Spurrier’s invitation. “My response was conditioned by the fact that I was ignorant to the high status of the other wines entered and the stature of the people doing the tasting,” he chuckles.
In late May of 1976, Winiarski was visiting Chicago when his wife, Barbara, called to tell him the exciting news about the competition. But the true impact of the victory didn’t sink in until he returned to the winery and began fielding hundreds of calls from retail shops desperately trying to get their hands on bottles of the wine that had beaten first growths from France (including Chateau Lafite-Rothschild and Haut-Brion).
While the legend of the 1973 vintage continues to grow beyond his greatest expectations, Winiarski hasn’t rested on his early accomplishments. Instead, his Stag’s Leap winery continues to be committed to the highest farming standards and to constantly improving wine quality.
“Not only did the Paris tasting give us more confidence,” says Winiarski, “but once we knew that our soils could produce beautiful wines as good as anywhere else in the world, it also gave us the goal to excel further.”
Learn from the best
Known for his signature blue beret and charming smile, winemaker Mike Grgich was born in the small Dalmatian village of Desne in Croatia. The last of 11 children, he was destined to be part of the wine industry.
“In the village where I was born, everybody worked picking the grapes at harvest. There was no such thing as a babysitter. Instead, at the age of 3, my parents would put me in the big grape bins from which I couldn’t escape. I would jump up and down, squishing grapes for hours at a time. When I was hungry, there were grapes to eat. When I was thirsty, there was grape juice to drink. It’s all a practical approach in Croatia.”
While studying chemistry at the University of Zagreb in the mid-1950s, Grgich began to dream of moving to America after being inspired by a professor, who returned from a sabbatical to the New World declaring, “California is a paradise.” Those words painted a vivid image that’s lingered in Grgich’s mind ever since.
After escaping from the Eastern Bloc to Canada, Grgich eventually arrived in Napa Valley in 1958 with only $34 in his pocket. At the time, the region was little more than a sleepy agricultural zone. So to follow his dream of being a winemaker, he quickly immersed himself in the culture and started looking for jobs at the best wineries of the era.
Like Winiarski, Grgich also worked with winemaker Lee Stewart on Howell Mountain. Under his guidance, the young immigrant learned to craft memorable wines with the highest quality grapes available. “Stewart taught me how important it is to have a solid winemaking system and to establish a signature style of wine that’s a fingerprint of the winery regardless of the vintage,” he says.
After working with Brother Timothy at Christian Brothers and Tchelistcheff at Beaulieu Vineyards in the mid-1960s, Grgich joined the winemaking team at Robert Mondavi Winery in 1968. To stay fresh and informed, Mondavi, Grgich and other key members of the staff often staged blind tastings to rate their red and white wines against top examples from France. Lessons learned from these exercises would eventually earn the winery a reputation for award-winning wines and, in turn, necessitate an increase in production to meet consumer demand.
“Not only was the winery geared toward producing the best wines in the world, it was also a process that required us to work and think at the same time, 365 days of the year,” remembers Grgich, now 84. “It was a really amazing experience.”
With a growing reputation of his own, Grgich was hired away from Mondavi in 1972, by Southern California investors Jim Barrett and Ernie Hahn, to be head winemaker at Chateau Montelena. At the time, this historic winery was little more than a dilapidated skeleton of the original stone building and vineyards developed by Alfred Tubbs in the mid-1880s. So when Grgich started in May of that year, he was handed a pad of paper, a pencil and a ruler, and asked to design the operational winery from scratch. Within just three months, he was able to assemble a workable facility—complete with new tanks, state-of-the art presses, hoists—and all the other accoutrements necessary to produce fine wine on the property.
“The goal was to rebuild the historic brand from the ground up,” says Grgich. “We either make true chateau quality wines, or else we weren’t living up to the winery’s name.”
While the first vintage of Chateau Montelena Chardonnay received favorable response from critics, the 1973 showed signs of greatness from the very beginning. For instance, after tasting a barrel sample, British wine critic Harry Shaw told Grgich it tasted better than any Chardonnay he’d yet tried from France. Once bottled and released in early 1975, the finished wine went on to receive top ranking over a 1972 Batard-Montrachet from Burgundy—by a 3-to-1 margin—at an exclusive tasting in San Diego.
“It was at that point I knew we had a great thing going,” says Grgich.
Sadly, after the wine’s tremendous victory in Paris, tension began to grow between Barrett and Grgich over who was responsible for the finished product. As a result, Grgich left the winery soon after—and the two haven’t spoken since. Which makes it a bit easier to understand why Grgich is barely mentioned in “Bottle Shock” and why he would not comment on the film.
In 1977, Grgich started Grgich Hills Cellars with Austin Hills (of the Hills Brothers coffee family). Any doubts about his ability to make great Chardonnay was quickly laid to rest when the winery’s debut release won the top award over 221 other contenders at a major wine competition in Chicago. Chardonnay has been the flagship at the winery ever since.
Today, Grgich still feels each new vintage has the same potential as the 1973. “Winemaking is an art you’re not born knowing,” he says. “Instead, it’s a continuous flow of striving to do things better and learning from trying to make the best wines possible with each vintage. It’s all about setting your heart and mind to doing it right, despite the odds!”
The vision continues
Today, Winiarski and Grgich are both regarded within the wine industry as living, breathing, walking encyclopedias of how grapes are grown and wines produced. To savvy wine consumers, they’re legends who stand behind the wines they produce. What’s more, just as they did when they came to the Napa Valley in the late ’50s and early ’60s, neither is afraid to observe, learn and apply new techniques (in the vineyard and in the cellar) to produce better wines.
In August, Winiarski shocked the wine industry by selling Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars to a joint venture partnership of Ste. Michelle Wine Estates of Washington state and Marchese Piero Antinori of Italy for a cool $185 million; the sale didn’t include the 120-acre Arcadia Vineyard, a gorgeous piece of property located in the rolling hills east of the town of Napa.
Asked to explain the potential of the Chardonnay, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon planted on gravelly silty loam soils on the property his family kept, Winiarski uses his favorite Italian phrase, “Vedremo in Cent’Anni!” (We’ll see in 100 years). In the meantime, Antinori and Chateau Ste. Michelle have hired him as consultant for three years to provide “strategic insight” as the winery goes through the transition to new ownership.
And Grgich, who will be celebrating his 50th vintage in Napa Valley in 2008, has become a true believer in biodynamic farming practices, which use the natural cycles of the earth and cosmos to strengthen the vines and eliminate all artificial fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides. The main goal is to look at the estate property as one large, pulsing, self-contained, self-sustaining and self-regulating ecosystem to produce healthy, high-quality grapes year after year.
As a winemaker, Grgich has remained committed to producing top-notch wines with four main characteristics: quality, consistency, balance and longevity. “In 1973, I felt the same way about what I was doing with grapes as I do now. It’s all about finding an expression and capturing it inside a bottle!”
Both Winiarski and Grgich prove that, like good grapes, good people improve with maturity. Now all that remains to be seen is whether either “Bottle Shock” or “Judgment of Paris” can portray these legendary characters accurately.
