Wine: Celebrating Mike Grgich's 94th birthday

[Mike Buckley]

This upcoming Saturday, April 1 is Napa Valley winemaker Mike Grgich's 94th birthday. I will host a small dinner party that day at which two of the courses, a corn chowder and rabbit wrapped in a puff pastry, will be paired with his chardonnay displayed in the photo shown below.

Grgich became famous first as the winemaker of Chateau Montelena's chardonnay that won the 1976 blind tasting held in Paris and conducted by French judges. The very surprising results of that contest, which pitted some of the best Napa Valley red and white wines against the same from France, put Napa Valley on the map of the wine world. For those of you familiar with highly regarded French wineries, you will appreciate that Grgich's chardonnay beat out the following white Burgundies: a Batard-Montrachet, Joseph Drouhin's Clos des Mouches, Domaine Leflaive's Puligny-Montrachet, and a Mersault from the famous Charmes vineyard. Though the movie, Bottle Shock, is about that event, Grgich is not depicted in it.

The next year he started his own Grgich Hills winery with partner Austin Hills of the Hills Brothers coffee family. In 1980 his Chardonnay from the 1977 vintage, which was made when his winery was only months old, was judged the best of 221 chardonnays submitted from all over the world to a Chicago wine tasting. Having won the two hugely important competitions in 1976 and 1980, he was called the King of Chardonnay.

I have enjoyed following Grgich's career over the years so much that three years ago I also posted this thread featuring a photo of his 2010 chardonnay and this thread celebrating his 91st birthday.

Setup
The background is gold, somewhat shiny presentation board. A small continuous-light lamp high above the scene on the right side lights the overall scene. A flash light in the front brightens part of the label. A flash light behind the bottle and glass brightly lights part of the background to make the wine appear bright and to display most of the outlines of the glass bottle and wine glass in rich, dark tones.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[mugge]

Mike, your treatment of this label is superb. On the negative side, we do not have this label in Australia
Cheers Ole

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you to John and Ole!

[bnnrcn]

WOW! While I was busy with moving to my new house, you did wonders again

[ST1]

Very nicely done Mike


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[Mike Buckley]

Thank you to Binnur and Peter!

Hope everything goes well at your new home, Binnur!

The wine was terrific. One of our guests liked it so much that she took a photo of the label so she could remember it in the future.

[bje07]

Nice gold tone, it must be good this wine