Chardonnay

The name Burgundy conjures up images of lush pinot noirs and chardonnays with expensive price tags, served to you with a French accent. It’s most wine lovers dream to visit the region and immerse yourself in pate, pinot and pastries.

Bottle Shock On May 24, 1976, Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant hoping to stoke sales at his French-wine-only shop, held a wine competition in Paris. In this competition French judges were invited to blind-taste top chardonnays and cabernet sauvignons from France and California. In an event that would later be dubbed the Judgment of Paris , the California wines –included merely to serve as the “sacrificial lambs” to the supposedly superior French wines- won the competition in a shocking upset. This singular event revolutionized the wine industry and put California on the map as a major world producer of fine wine. This story comes to life on the silver screen for the first time with the film Bottle Shock , starring Bill Pullman, Alan Richman, and Dennis Farina among other notables. I recently chatted with Bottle Shock Co-Writer and Producer Jody Savin about the film. Why this film now? To answer this question in a socio-political sense, I would venture to say that we live in challenging times.

In about 1820, a San Antonio winery was built in what is now Goleta, just north of the City of Santa Barbara. The wine was made predominately for the missions as sacramental wine, but the padres undoubtedly made a little extra on the side. The lonely adobe winery is still standing and nearly 200 years later, the wine industry in Santa Barbara County is thriving, in spite of the fluctuations of the economy, transitional markets, fickle consumers and inconsistent harvests.

A legend in Napa Valley, Croatian born winemaker Mike Grgich has witnessed -and played a major role in- the transformation of Napa Valley from rural farm town to international wine superpower. His Chardonnays have been victorious at two of the most celebrated wine tastings in modern history. In 1976, the Chardonnay he crafted for Napa's Chateau Montelena beat the best wines France had to offer in the wine industry altering Judgment of Paris. A year later, he partnered with Austin Hills of the Hills Bros. Coffee family to launch Grgich Hills Cellar. The extraordinary winemaking continued as in 1980 Grgich Hills Chardonnay beat 221 other Chardonnays for first place in a blind tasting at The Great Chicago Showdown. The moniker "The King of Chardonnay" soon followed. I had the great fortune of chatting with Mike Grgich recently. What follows is his take on the past, present, and future of Napa Valley wine and Grgich Hills.