Get the real scoop on the "Bottle Shock" movie

By: JohnTylerWines Mood: energetic Date: 08/25/2008 11:51:42 Music: None

This is an article by the Press Democrat, ran today.....check it out!! Helen is my grandma and founder of our vineyards!!

Napa didn't grow the famed grapesHelen Bacigalupi, who's grown wine grapes off Westside Road with her husband, Charles, for four decades, won't picket "Bottle Shock" showings or demand a correction.But Helen, 82, would like to set the record straight.The new film on the earth-shaking victory of a Napa Valley chardonnay over France's best whites in 1976 leaves the impression the triumphant grapes were grown at Calistoga's Chateau Montelena.Au contraire."The Napa people never wanted anyone to know that the chardonnay came from Sonoma County," Helen said.Years ago, she said, her granddaughter contacted journalist George Taber, whose book, "Judgment of Paris," inspired the movie. She urged him to get it right about the origin of the 1973 chardonnay that alerted the world that California wines had arrived.Taber did tell it straight.He wrote that in '73, Chateau Montelena bought "just over 40 tons of chardonnay from local growers" -- about 20 tons from Henry Grapestake in Alexander Valley, 14 tons from the Bacigalupis in Russian River Valley and the remaining 5 tons from Napa Valley growers John Hanna and Lee Paschich.So 80-plus percent of the grapes whose wine brought Napa global acclaim in '76 came from Sonoma. The film doesn't mention that.Helen said the 4 acres of chardonnay vines that produced the grapes she and Charles sold to Montelena 35 years ago still bear fruit, though less each year."They're just dying off one by one," she said. She'd like to pull them out and replant, but the Napa Valley winemaker who now buys the grapes pleads that she not.Leslie Rudd, owner of Oakville's Rudd Vineyards & Winery (and chairman of Dean & DeLuca) knows the story of those vines, and he hopes to keep it going until they've pushed out their last grape.