Here are a few stories regarding wine worth keeping in your back pocket. Not to impress, but just because they're genuinely interesting.
In 1976 there was a blind tasting in Paris. French judges, French wines, set against a few upstart bottles from California. Everyone assumed France would win, because France always won. California won. The judges, tasting blind, picked the Americans without knowing it. It rattled the wine world badly enough that they eventually made a film about it, (Bottleshock) and it more or less ended the idea that great wine could only ever come from Europe.
Sometime in the 1800s a tiny insect from America nearly wiped out every vineyard in Europe, feeding on the roots until the vines died. The fix was strange and a little humbling. They grafted the European vines onto tough American roots the insect couldn't kill. Which means almost every European vine alive today, the famous Burgundies and Bordeaux people revere, is quietly growing on American rootstock.
The monk Dom Perignon, whose name sits on one of the most famous Champagnes in the world, did not invent Champagne, and almost certainly never cried "come quickly, I am tasting stars." He actually spent much of his life trying to stop wine from going fizzy, because back then the bubbles were considered a fault. The romantic line was dreamed up by marketers a long time later.
And a small one. A 2004 film called Sideways had a character who loved Pinot Noir and loudly refused to drink Merlot. Merlot sales actually dropped afterward while Pinot prices climbed. The joke is that the character's single most prized bottle, the one he was saving for something special, was mostly Merlot. People's tastes are shaped by stories far more than they'd ever admit, which is worth remembering the next time you're certain you hate something.
