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The off-screen rivalry between the films is stranger than fiction. Scriptwriter Robert Kamen (The Karate Kid, Fifth Element), owner of Kamen Wines in Sonoma, launched The Judgement of Paris with the blessing of Steven Spurrier, organiser of the Paris tasting. But the English wine expert alleged character defamation and misrepresentation. Spurrier threatened to sue Bottle Shock (where Alan Rickman plays Spurrier alongside Bill Pullman and a star cast), which tells the story of California's Chateau Montelena, maker of the winning Chardonnay at the taste-off.

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The film poster shows flying wine bottles aimed at the Eiffel Tower in a 9/11 French day of reckoning - and shouts "Based on a true story ... The French never knew what hit them". The publicists argue Bottle Shock is "loosely based" on the taste-off, that "no-one owns the rights to an historical event", and it "tells the story of the birth of the Napa wine industry".

Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, Bottle Shock beat The Judgement of Paris to the box-office. You can watch the tasters at work in the Bottle Shock trailer on you tube as well as read a mixed batch of reviews. The corkscrews are out while we wait for it to hit the silver screen in South Africa.

Makes me think. The legendary SAA Australia versus South Africa wine test of 1996 might stir similar controversy with the right script and stars. In new-world mythology, the blind tasting has also passed into wine history as "a seminal event that shook the South African wine community and began intense - often heated and recriminatory - debate during 1996, more on the wisdom of staging such events than on the reason for the thumping Australian victory" (John Platter, "A fated Wine Test Match", 1997). He recalls Cape producers cried foul, complained they were not consulted, the wine selections were arbitrary, and a post-sanctions South Africa was not yet ready.

The few Cape producers who fared well at the SAA Shield Contest in 1996 attained fabled status still talked about a decade later. Stellenzicht Syrah 1994 won third place in the Shiraz category, beating the legendary Penfold Grange 1990 - while Stellenzicht Sauvignon Blanc 1995, the top Cape entry, won third place overall.

Andre van Rensburg, then winemaker of Stellenzicht, made the celebrated comment, "If a winemaker is scared of competing against Chile, he should stop making wine and grow vegetables ... The objections of the better-known estates are based on their unjust reputations earned from wine writers who have been too kind to them." A Hollywood scriptwriter could hardly do better. Russell Crowe (star of Second Chance, another wine movie on the circuit) could play the big burly winemaker - while Danny de Vito, could lighten up the tasting panel by playing one of the local judges.

The purists may decry the clichés of wine in the movies but consider an excerpt from the cult film Sideways - what it did to promote Pinot and what it did to bury Merlot. "It's a hard grape to grow. It's delicate, fragile and temperamental; it ripens early. It needs constant care and attention. Only the most patient and nurturing of growers can unlock its potential, its fullest expression ... haunting, thrilling and subtle."

We're talking Pinot, of course. Miles, the protagonist in the film noir Sideways, is an unashamed Pinotphile. Watching it sideways on the couch the other night with a glass of Bouchard Finlayson Pinot Noir, the poetic Pinot passage came to mind again. In the viticultural movie, the fragile Miles, the personification of Pinot, raves about his passion for the great grape, derides its Burgundian twin Chardonnay as easily manipulated with too much wood - and writes off Cabernet as too prosaic by far.

Product placement costs plenty on the big screen. Sponsors pay a fortune to sneak a bottle of Jack, Jim or Johnnie into a branded scene. Fact or fiction, the movies popularise wine culture and help recruit a new wine generation, benefiting the whole wine industry, whether American, French or South African. Talking of celebrity drinkers, while researching a glossy feature on what the stars sip, I surfed entertaining websites from Hollywood Party Girl and the Liquid Muse to Famous Wine Quotes.

Keanu Reeves is a big-spender on wine. While promoting the Matrix Reloaded in Los Angeles, he revealed his passion for Australian wine, proudly telling reporters how he stocked up on bottles of 1971 Grange at about R6,000 per bottle and 1990 Mount Mary Quintet blend at R3,000. Celebrity-spotting, I found out that Johnny Depp drank Chateau Petrus on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Sam Neill enjoys his Two Paddocks Pinot Noir, and that Cliff Richard infamously thought his own wine was rubbish when presented it blind by Gordon Ramsay. In a famous Bond bubbly scene, Dr No exclaims "That's a Dom Perignon '55 - it would be a pity to break it". "I prefer the '53 myself (Marilyn Monroe's favourite)," responds Bond who drank Bollinger 1961.

I couldn't find any South African celebrities among the Hollywood crowd, not even Charlize Theron, Arnold Vosloo or Alice Krige. We could do with our own celebrity wino website. Cape wine needs aspirational advertising, a glass of Pinotage on the silver screen. In the meantime, we'll imagine a movie of the Judgement Down Under.

South African Rant?...

Note: “The Judgement of Paris,” is still “In Production...”

Source: “Bottle Shock vs The Judgement of Paris,” Graham Howe, WineCoZa, March 30, 2008