Review of Bottle Shock (2008) by Edith N — 22 Jan 2011

Sense of Place.

I have to tell you, I have no idea what makes wine taste great. I mean, I know some of the details. There is, of course, that interesting oddity of [i]terroir[/i]. Where you grow a thing will change the finished product. It's all to do with soil and rain and air and sunlight and all those things humans don't entirely control. This will change the quality of things. What variety of grape you use. The weather in the year it's grown. How you age it and what you age it in. All sorts of things like that. But there are two wines in this movie where people taste them and act like the wine is actually the nectar of the gods, as if there is no doubt that this is the best wine to have ever crossed their lips and kissed their palates. And I have no idea how you can be that certain over something that subjective. I have no idea how the taste can vary so dramatically that people can actually taste the year of a wine as well as the grapes.

But Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman) is a Wine Snob. He also happens to be a Wine Snob running a failing business, and he decides that the way to perk it up is to hold a blind taste test between French wines and the finest Californian wines. He therefore goes out to the Napa Valley to taste wines until he finds the finest Californian wines. While there, he encounters Jim (Bill Pullman) and Bo (Chris Pine) Barrett, owners of Chateau Montelena, a struggling vineyard. If they don't manage to make a profit this year, they will likely lose the business to the bank. We also have Bo's friend Gustavo Brambila (Freddy Rodríguez), who is perfecting his own wine, and intern Sam Fulton (Rachael Taylor), who provides dramatic tension between Bo and Gustavo. Also breasts. I wouldn't say any of these people befriend Spurrier. He doesn't do friends, particularly. But they come to know each other in a vague sort of way, and they definitely rely on one another.

The attitude toward Californian wines in the beginning of the movie reminds me of Steve Martin in [i]The Muppet Movie[/i]--"the finest sparkling wine of Idaho." As it happens, I have been to the Napa Valley. Not the year these events take place; I was busy being gestated. But not long after. The people of Napa are proud of their wine, and by all accounts they ought to be. Mr. Garcia (Miguel Sandoval) says he should have sold his grapes to Gallo, but of course he has too much pride to do that. Joe (Eliza Dushku) demands to know if Spurrier thought all their wines were Thunderbird. (I put it to you that he would not have known what Thunderbird was if you hit him over the head with a bottle of it.) And a woman in the airport quite cheerfully announces that her father brewed hooch during Prohibition, as who did not? Spurrier is also right at the end when he talks of wine culture expanding from that moment. You can indeed go into a store and find wine not just from Europe and California--and here--but from New Zealand and Chile. Let the snobbery begin.

One of the other things Napa has to trade on is scenery, and director Randall Miller goes for the gold on it. (Though Napa County produced more silver.) In fact, the specific gold he goes for is light. He used the Magic Hour to produce a sense of nostalgia. For non-cinephiles, the Magic Hour (also, of course, known as the Golden Hour, but "Magic" is the more common adjective used in film) is the term given to the first and last hours of light in the day. There is a quality to them which is unmatchable at any other time of day, and I would put it to you that the light matters so much because it is the light of memory. Neither I nor most of my friends can remember 1976, but the past, as film has long told us, is distinguishable by camera and lighting effects. Sepia, often, or slightly scratched or overexposed. And here, the light of the past is richer and warmer. It is the light of summer vacation in the country.

My understanding is that the events of this movie are at best embellished from the real "Judgment of Paris." Certainly the real-life Steven Spurrier is not a huge fan, though I wouldn't complain were I male and played by Alan Rickman. It seems that the real-life Gustavo Brambila might have room to complain. And Freddy Rodríguez, while a fine and talented actor, has a long way to go before he's Alan Rickman. Still, I would also suggest that you'd have to be a pretty hardcore oenophile to spot the changes, were you not personally involved in them. I also think that the French haven't much room to complain about their treatment. The fact is, Movie Spurrier is a brash intruder into both French viticulture and Napa. (We get to see his hesitant tasting of both Kentucky Fried Chicken and guacamole--not at the same time.) The French find him pushy, and so do the Americans. And he acknowledges this and understands it. Yes, the French are snobby, but there is plenty of snobbishness to go 'round.