Was perusing Netflix and stumbled on “Bottle Shock”. I had read the book but not seen the movie. Decided to have glass of wine and watch the movie. The only wine I had open was MAIPE Sauvignon Blanc, swill, but drinkable. Figured I had to get a good red wine so went to the cellar and opened a bottle of ’00 ESJ Wylie-Fenaughty, not a cab based wine but a wine that should be worthy of drinking while watching this movie. The movie was fun and indeed history where in ’76 CA wines beat out the French. Ch Montelena won for the white and Stags Leap won for the reds. The French have still not gotten over it but it was indeed duplicated in 1996;amazing. Still not able to accept this happening the French wine industry said the wines were tasted too young and if they had had more bottle age the French wines would have won. Now, the Wylie-Fenaughty was very good, bold, easy to drink and to it’s credit, or not, very French in style. I have only a few comments.
1)Way to go USA but not sure they are still making the same style wine and the French have woke up, cleaned up their wine making, and IMHO taken some huge steps forward.
2)ESJ would not have done well. Steve’s wines take several years to develop and my 11 year old wine was excellent but probably not as good 5-6 years ago.
3)Recommend the movie, recommend the ESJ (all of his stuff) but still am an old world wine drinker.
Walt