Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Bottle Shock

Sunday afternoon, my wife and I watched this movie called Bottle Shock. It's based on a true story. It's about a competition between the French wineries and California wineries. A British wine snob, wants to prove that the French wines are better. So he organizes this competition, with expert wine tasting judges. They do a blind taste test and to everyone's surprise, the California Winery wins. Here's the trailer:


The movie is about Chateau Montelena. You can read about there story here. I thought the movie was pretty interesting. I always thought of the French wines as the high end wine, and the California wine as something you pick up for $7 bucks at the grocery store when your being cheap. It's nice to know that California can hold it's own as far a wine making goes. I'm makes me want to bust out singing a country song.

The name of the movie "Bottle Shock" refers to the effect on wine after being jarred, shaken, or otherwise handled roughly. One might think that this is some "wine snob" myth, or that it only affects high end wines or that it can only be detected by people with an elite pallet for wine tasting. I was surprised when I noticed this with my blueberry wine. The bluebury wine was so smooth when we tasted it. We bottled it, and then opened a bottle a day or so later. The wine was still good, but not quite as smooth. It had a distinctively noticeable harshness that wasn't there before. The effect of bottle shock does go away if the bottles are allowed to rest for about a month.

2 comments:

  1. Doh! I was going to watch this and I realise you told me who won!

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  2. Sorry about the spoiler. I guess I figured anyone could guess it's an underdog win movie. It's still a good movie anyway.

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