Okay, only about five years late on this. But, thanks to site reader Quizicat drawing a parallel to our recent discussion of moscato, I’ve learned that I missed an episode of “30 Rock” where wine featured prominently. Jack Donaghy is delighted to have his name on his own sparkling wine from Long Island and he shares it with Liz Lemon. They toast each other, take a sip–and then both spit it out and retch, with Liz scraping her tongue with her fingers. Jack wonders how he is ever going to sell 10,000 cases of this wine…

When Tracy likes it, Jack has the idea of getting the hip-hop star Ridikulous (played by LL Cool J) to flog the wine in a performance. In the spirit of full disclosure, Jack informs Ridikulous that Robert Parker wrote that “Donaghy Estates tastes like the urine of Satan after a hefty portion of asparagus.”

But how many points?!?

You can see the episode on Netflix streaming or buy it on Amazon or iTunes.

“Ahhhhhh, the French!… Champagne…” The outtakes of this Orson Welles ad make the rounds periodically, with this one racking up 854,000 views thus far. And, yes, it is funny when you turn on the outrageously bad closed captioning…

Check out this “Hitler yelling” parody that several people tweeted to my attention. Even if it’s 18 months old, it’s still sufficient for your Saturday LOL needs.

That’s how Gary Vaynerchuk concluded what he said was his final wine video. (He had previously announced stepping down from his position at Wine Library.) I was once a guest on Wine Library TV, aka the “Thunder Show,” and the show had a fun run for five years. I wish Gary sunny skies in his future endeavors.

But what does Gary’s departure mean for wine video? After five years of gaining lots of traction on WLTV, he has come to define the space, with his gonzo style and spitting into a Jets bucket. Wine and TV are a difficult blend to master. Gary had his own distinctive style. It will be interesting to see what others can do with wine video, from finding a business model that works to the style of entertainment.

Meanwhile, the Jets dump bucket has to go into a wine Hall of Fame.

“Totally Uncorked” [TIME]
“A wine guru for the YouTube era” [Slate]
“The Pour – This Wine Critic Can Drive People to Drink” [NYT]

Okay, this isn’t going to knock the Old Spice guy out of the advertising Hall of Fame. But, hey, it’s the best wine ad I’ve ever seen! I raise a glass of 14.4% alcohol zinfandel in the ad’s honor.

Addendum: cork marketers, take note!
UPDATE: I posted a few more details about making the ad.

In a memorable scene in Casino Royale, James Bond sipped Chateau Angelus on a train while meeting Vesper Lynd. The St Emilion maker of bold blend of merlot and cabernet franc paid for the placement in cash and wine.

Jean-Bernard Grenié told me today that the laws prohibiting advertising wine in France made the producer pursue a strategy of product placement in movies. Their agent in Paris had a connection to the Broccoli family, producers of the Bond film, and sent them a case. Grenié said that they “loved” the wines. Angelus paid “some cash and some wine” for the placement. Grenié did not specify the amount of either. Co-owner Hubert de Bouard had previously told decanter.com that the impact on sales was “unbelievable.”

Will it be James Bond’s wine of choice in future movies? “Yes,” Grenié replied, adding “as long as somebody doesn’t pay more than we did.”

If they are on ABC’s Cougar Town, that is. Also, pouring wine should be done to the rim, apparently.

Of note: Sheryl Crow played a sales rep at wine distributor in Wednesday night’s episode. As SlateWine quipped on Twitter, “Does this mean she supports three-tier system? Say it ain’t so, Ms. Crow.” Couldn’t she bring her glamor to another part of the wine biz, such as an independent shop owner? The cougars have to buy their Merlot from somewhere, after all.

There have been a couple of videos about the wine business circulating recently. They both have used a site called xtranormal, which allows users to select a scene, type text, chose camera angles and music to make a short video.

If you have been dying to make your own wine “movie,” now is your chance! Whip up a short video (about a minute) and paste the link in the comments here by next Monday. Then we can vote from short list of finalists next week. Check out the above video for instructions!

Besides the heapings of glory, the top vote getter will win a copy of my book, A Year of Wine! So just when you thought you might get some work done after Labor Day, surf on over and get started at xtranormal.com. (Btw, I found that the editing only worked in the Safari browser.)

So Ross Schwartz told the assembled group at the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers in Napa last week. Schwartz, formerly an entertainment lawyer based in Los Angeles, wrote the screenplay for the movie Bottle Shock, which stars Alan Rickman and recently appeared on DVD. It loosely depicts the events of the Paris tasting of 1976 when a Chateau Montelena Chardonnay and a Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon surprised the wine world by beating their French peers in a blind tasting. Schwartz elaborated on his goals for the screenplay, “When people walk out of the movie, I just want people to know who won the tasting and to want to buy a good bottle of wine.”

He said that he initially rebuffed the idea when his wife suggested writing a screenplay about the famous tasting, saying, “there’s nothing more boring than a wine tasting for people who aren’t tasting wine because it’s not a spectator sport! It’s not like Seabiscuit coming in–is he going to win at the end–or Rocky–is he going to get up? It’s a bunch of people swirling and spitting wine!” To make it work, he originally thought to frame it as a murder mystery in the vein of Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (IMDB) But ultimately he decided it should have the excitement of a sports movie and chose the Disney movie Cool Runnings as a model.

I caught up with him after his panel presentation and he told me that he has been collecting and consuming wine since 1976 when he went to college at UC Berkeley. He started researching the script in 2001 (well before Taber’s book was published, he pointed out) on “the Napa side” by talking to Jim and Bo Barrett of Chateau Montelena and their then-winemaker Mike Grgich. He also talked with Warren Winiarski of Stags Leap but in the end decided to focus on the Montelena side of the competition.

But after reading the script, Grigich asked to be removed. So instead of the winemaker-Bo Barrett rivalry, the producer and director decided to play up the father-son rivalry instead (the director and Jody Savin both also receive writing credits for the movie). Schwartz said that they also modified his screenplay in several ways, including cutting the mention of Winiarski’s wine to a mere mention in the final scroll at the end and moving the final tasting outdoors. He also said that the role for Patricia Gallagher, Spurrier’s assistant who went on the preliminary mission to California, was cut after Alan Rickman signed up for the film.

Schwartz said that the movie got into the Sundance film festival at a difficult time. Two years prior, in 2006, Little Miss Sunshine had been scooped up and rose to Oscar heights. Thus, he said, that movie houses bought too many films out of Sundance in 2007 and were stung, leaving them to only take four out of a hundred or so in 2008. Bottle Shock was not among them. So the producers decided to self-distribute, got it into 20 theaters for a national launch last August (eventually reaching 450), and it is now being shown extensively on airplanes.

As with the rival productions depicting Truman Capote’s life a few years ago, Bottle Shock was one of two movies being made about the famous Paris tasting. The other project bought the rights to George Taber’s book about the event, Judgment of Paris, signed on Robert Kamen as screenwriter, and today, has stalled. That project also had the support of Steven Spurrier who arranged the tasting in 1976 and today is a contributing editor to Decanter magazine. Schwartz claims he has a financial interest in the project.

Schwartz said that Decanter published stories about Bottle Shock that were “at least hype and certainly manipulative.” He pointed to this story that suggests actors “such as Jude Law and Hugh Grant” were in consideration. “They were trying to knock out our financing,” Schwartz said. “They didn’t even have a script!” He also pointed to their coverage of the movie after it debuted at Sundance.

“Their banner headline read ‘Bottle Shock opens to mixed reviews.’ Well, we got glowing reviews in Variety, Reporter, and Rolling Stone. There were some blogs that didn’t like us. They immediately went on to talk to some people who were running some blogs to say how terrible the movie was. But you can’t say when we got glowing reviews in the big papers that matter and some blogs found fault with it, you’re going to have a title that reads ‘opens to mixed reviews.’ And then not say that the senior editor has a stake in the other movie?” (For a roundup of reviews of the movie, check metacritic.com.)

Reached for comment, Adam Lechmere of Decanter said that the magazine’s relationship with Spurrier did not influence their coverage.

Reached for comment about his financial interest in the rival movie, Spurrier wrote via email that he sold his life rights to the Judgment of Paris project for $1,000. He elaborated, “I was an adviser to the project and was due to receive a fee if the movie had been made. As it was, these people walked away from the project over a year ago.” Finally, he added about Bottle Shock, “no doubt I shall have to watch it on my flight to Singapore next week, but at least it will be from the comfort of First Class, with a glass of Dom Perignon to ease the pain.”

Schwartz is devoting his energy to screenwriting and has written eight and sold one (Bottle Shock) but is optimistic that he will sell another script soon. He told me that a studio rejected one script of his because it was not expensive enough to make so he has written another that “can’t be made for less than $60 million.”

He also retains a handful of clients in his capacity as a lawyer, principally his father, Sherwood Schwartz, who created and produced Gilligan’s Island and Brady Bunch. He also represents the Beach Boys who are still touring 200 dates a year (who knew!) and he describes them as “recession-proof,” saying, “everybody wants to see the Beach Boys!”

According to Variety, the superb wine book now has writer/director David Koepp on board the movie version. With those action movies under his belt, the odds of a chase scene in the movie now stand at 2:1. The main question is whether they will be running with bottles of 1787 Lafitte in hand.

When I previously posted about the book, I wondered if they would amplify the tiny role that women occupy in the book. And even before that, we were speculating about casting decisions. Add your new thoughts if you have any!

As with the Capote movies and two movie versions of the Paris Tasting, there were at one point last year two productions happening around this juicy tale of bling and fraud. This version seems to be inching closer to becoming reality.

So I asked her whether she meant actually consuming wine or finding wine. She said both. So here’s what I said:

1. Spend a little extra on good stemware! You don’t have to break the bank since, undoubtedly, the glasses themselves will break at some point. But they can elevate modest wines and do fine wines the appropriate justice. Ravescroft has some good crystal stems starting at $10. And our house staple, as I’ve written before, is the Tritan Forte, which is “impact resistant” thanks to titanium infused in the lead-free crystal.

2. Find a good independent wine shop! You can read all you want about great sounding wines on blogs or in the paper but unless you can actually try the wines, your fun is severely limited. Work with an articulate member of the staff to find wines that you like.

You can read more about these suggestions–and more!–in my new book A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairing, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season. If Cara asked you for your top two general wine tips, what would you tell her?

Also, the first segment I did on Fox Business over the holidays has just unearthed from the great video vault somewhere (although the poor audio and video quality makes it look like I was in a witness relocation program). “Enjoy!”

Well, wine geeks in Vancouver know how to go to the movies. (And I’m talking about Vancouver, Washington, not that other eno-gastro-hub further north). The Cinetopia offers a wall of Enomatic machines, those self-service wine machines that dispense one ounce at a time after a swipe of your card. Over 100 “world class” choices are there for your tasting prior to the movie in one ounce pours.

And if you feel a little parched during the show, bring your wine in and there’s a waiter who can serve you food during the film! For more details, check out the promotional video. And tell me which wine you’d have with popcorn. I’d opt for Champagne.

A columnist on MSNBC later reported on other reporting, looking for a motive:

“David feels like Victoria needs something to do other than shopping and going to parties,” a source told Full Disclosure. “He is hoping she will get into the wine business and settle into some kind of regular routine.”

Ouch! SFLuxe.com throws cold water on the idea of their buying a property, instead suggesting they bought into The Napa Valley Reserve. A $150,000 deposit buys the right to purchase wine, from a half a barrel to three barrels. Members can be as involved as they like, picking grapes off the vine (in stilettos?) or punching down the cap.

What should be the name of their wine? The Sun suggested Chateau Posh, describing it as thin bodied.

If they do buy a winery, they would be the latest celebrities to buy one. Brangelina recently signed a long-term rental in Provence and Johnny Depp bought Venssa Paradis a vineyard there as well.

A reader writes in: “I’m flipping through the channels and “The Jerk” (Steve Martin) is on… and there’s a scene with him pulling wine from dispensers. Lafite 66!”

Funny image indeed! (Note wine glass in top left corner.) Hit the comments with your caption!