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Once again, a movie about grape growing, wine making and wine drinking gets it wrong.

"Based on a true story of love, victory and fermentation." Oh? Movies are notoriously bad at history, no matter how much the producers spend on artificial verisimilitude. When they spend zilch, it's embarrassing. No location shots in Paris, just three or four period Citroens to represent for "France," a yellow Gremlin for California. Everything's shot in telephoto so you can't see modern-day backgrounds, except for endless helicopter shots over lush vineyards (impossibly lush, given that the story takes place in early spring).

The woozy premise behind Bottle Shock is a blind tasting in Paris, organized in 1976 by a British wine merchant, Steven Spurrier. The top white, pitted against formidable French competition, was Chateau Montelena from Calistoga. An American red, from Stag's Leap, came in second to a classified Bordeaux. The lone journalist who covered the event, George Taber, wrote a few lines in Time that got picked up by the trades. The news made the insular French recognize that decent wine could come from Napa, thereby Changing the Course of Western Civilization.

Alan Rickman, an excellent actor, disgraces himself by portraying Spurrier as a pompous wine snob shunned by respectable Parisian wine makers. Nothing could be further from the truth. As it happens, Spurrier is a host for InTouch; here's part of his profile:

"Steven Spurrier joined the wine trade in 1964 as a trainee with Christopher & Co., London's oldest wine merchant. In 1970 he moved to Paris where he opened Les Caves de la Madeleine, which rapidly became one of the most highly regarded specialist wine shops in Paris.

"Three years later, he opened L'Academie du Vin, France's first private wine school, and went on to stage the most famous tasting in the modern history of wine, the so-called Paris Tasting of 1976, when a Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon from California scored more highly than some of the most prestigious wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux.

"In 1988 Spurrier returned to the UK, where he became a wine consultant and journalist."

So the notion that Spurrier was desperate for publicity is sheer invention, along with almost everything else in the film. Word is, he's most unhappy. The real story is in Taber's book, The Judgment of Paris (Scribner, 2005), which should make an interesting movie some day. Can't come too soon. As for Bottle Shock, despite its success at indie festivals (Sundance, SIFF), it has failed to find a commercial distributor.

Chasing last week's patriotic cocktail (generically in support of the US Olympics team), this week brings a shot for Barack Obama. It comes from longtime restaurant impressario Jackie Roberts of The Pink Door:

2 oz. Crater Lake Vodka (hand crafted American vodka from Oregon ) WHY? Because he loves America

2 oz. Freshly pressed grape juice WHY? Because he's fresh!

1/2 oz. cointreau WHY? Because he has a sweet side

1/2 oz. freshly pressed lemon juice WHY? Because he HAS to win Florida

Just a whisper of curaçao to make the drink green WHY? Because he is serious about the environment.

Coincidentally, we hope, it's also the second straight use of Blue Curaçao in this (Dubious Drinks) series. Anyway, dubbed the Obama-Rama, the cocktail is served up in a sugared martini glass garnished with a frozen grape and a tiny American flag, decorated with glitter bling by Jackie's own hand.

Will set you back ten bucks, with a dollar of that going to Obama's presidential campaign. Have one on the shaded view deck, or during the nightly cabaret performances. 

If this sounds snarky and needlessly mean-spirited, just blame the Chinese. In any event, the marketing wizards at McCormick & Schmick decreed that there would be cocktails with an Olympics theme, so the "Red White & Blue Martini" came into being.

Fortunately, barman Darrin Bengston knows his specific gravities. Raspberry purée into the bottom, followed by a shaker of Stoli Vanil and Stoli Blueberi. Float an ounce of Blue Curaçao, and voilà! The blue settles midway down the glass. Tastes like an eight-dollar popsicle.

Fortunately, too, McCormick's still has its after-10 PM happy hour menu, tasty plates under $2.

Sorry about the sad state of the dollar? Not as unhappy as the owners of tourist haunts around Europe.

So it's come to this: Harry's Bar , between the Grand Canal and the Piazza San Marco, is giving a 20 percent "poor American" discount . Just on the food, mind you; the bellinis (invented here) are still almost $25.

But airfare from Seattle (via Paris) is a relative bargain at $800.

Anyone want to join me? 

Starbucks, give 'em credit, is able to do more than one thing at a time. Mark of maturity, that. The papers are full of its plans to expand into every corner of the globe; this week it's Russia. On the domestic front, meantime, they're promoting a slogan to follow up on last year's "Geography is a Flavor." The new catchphrase: "Coffee is Culinary."

Half a step back to the very American notion, articulated by New Englander Ralph Waldo Emerson and practiced on the Western Frontier, of individuality, independence and self-reliance. (To this day, the red half the country admires the swagger of its true believer and über-practitioner in the White House.) One could argue that the way much of America does business, including striving to create new markets for Starbucks, is an outgrowth of this philosophy.

But much of this country, and indeed most of the world, would be followers of ubuntu, the Bantu way of saying "We're all in this together." Starbucks seems to recognize this as well. And what better way to showcase the concept of ubuntu than by involving 36-year-old Marcus Samuelsson in a new promotion.

Samuelsson was born (as Kassahun Tsegie) in an Ethiopean village, placed in an orphanage after his mother died of tuberculosis and raised by foster parents in Sweden. Sweden! He became a chef (at a Scandinavian restaurant, Aquavit, in New York) even as he embraced his African heritage. Not the negatives (poverty, war, famine, AIDS, corruption) but the vast continent of great beauty, teeming life, shared community and generous humanity: ubuntu.

For the Coffee is Culinary concept, Starbucks repackaged Samuelsson's award-winning The Soul of a New Cuisine (James Beard Foundation's Best International Cookbook in 2007) as Discovery of a Continent. (Coffee beans replaced plantains on the cover, for example.) One of the high priests of coffee at Starbucks, Master Blender Andrew Linneman, then collaborated with him to create two new coffee blends: Joya del dia (using Latin-American beans) and Ubora (African beans). In east Africa, they point out, people are as knowledgeable and fussy about coffee beans as American shoppers might be about tomatoes or corn. And they went way beyond "coffee cake" recipes.

In Seattle this week for the third stop in a 22-day, 10-city culinary tour, Samuelsson cooked up a Pan-African plate of spicy Ethiopean beef and aromatic Moroccan couscous while Linneman brewed some Ukora in a French press. The combination was astonishingly smooth and flavorful, with the coffee's floral notes providing a counterpoint to the fragrance and heat of the berbere chilies in the meat. Around the room (the Starbucks in Madison Park), nips and sips and sighs of shared contentment. Ubuntu at work.

Who knew coffee could be so complex and enriching? Starbucks knew.

Andrea just posted a charming story about a coincidence in France. Here's another one.

According to the rental car's dashboard digits, it's 11:11 on 07 07 07, the temperature is 22.2 degrees and I've driven 333.3 kilometers since leaving Paris. What does it all mean? That would be the coincidence of crossing paths with Seattle chef Kerry Sear at the bustling Saturday market in Beaune, of all places. Normally, he's leading tours of the Pike Place Market, then returning to Cascadia to make lunch for the gang. But he's winding up a two-week vacation in France split between Paris and Burgundy. And at today's weekly farmers market, he's seriously impressed with the richness of produce, meat and cheese, from $1.25 a pound on-the-vine tomatoes to the piles of foraged mousserons and girolles. "No big fuss about 'organic' here, is there?" he observes. "No need." In Paris last week, Kerry spent a day in the three-star kitchen of the George V, another day watching 14 line cooks prepare small plates for the 24-seat at the Atelier Joel Robuchon. Back home, it's going to be Urban: Paris with Paris-on-the-patio wine tastings in August, Rural: Burgundy in September. Inspiration, that's what vacations are all about, n'est-ce pas?

Better believe it, the 25-year reign of the Copper River salmon is over. The new king comes from the mighty Yukon River, and the architect of its ascendancy is (no real surprise) the same power-behind-the-throne, Jon Rowley.

Nothing personal, the assembled court seemed to say (to the Copper) at a luncheon at Elliott's Oyster House. You've had a remarkable run, leading Seattle diners into new realms of taste. But the new guy, well, he's everything you were (and still are) only more so!

Technically, the more intense flavor comes from additional fat: up to 50 percent more of those nutritious Omega 3 oils. The Yukon River is 2,000 miles long and the salmon have to swim for up to two months without eating before they reach their spawning grounds. (The Copper is much shorter, though more rugged.)

Until last year, most Yukons were frozen and shipped to Japan; very few fresh fish ever made it out of Alaska. It's a long, tough slog from the village of Emmonak, pop. 767, so remote that a dozen eggs cost $5.50 past-pull-date milk is $10 a gallon, and an airplane ticket to Anchorage, 1,000 miles across the tundra, is $800. What's made the difference in this remote location is a five-year-old cooperative established by the local Yup'ik Eskimo community called Kwikpak Fisheries, which hooked up with Rowley to work out logistics and marketing.

Down on the Copper, the fishery is sophisticated: big boats with communications gear and power winches to reel in the gill nets. The mouth of the Yukon is broader and shallower, so boats are open skiffs; it's not unusual to find an entire family aboard to haul the nets in by hand. The natives have been fishing like this for the past 10,000 years.

What's different for the Yukon fishery this season is simple: ice. Kwikpak, buying only from boats that keep their catch iced, ships them by bush plane to Anchorage, then by regular airfreight to Seattle.

The season starts tomorrow and it's a short one, maybe three weeks, 30,000 to 60,000 fish max.

Rowley reminds us that the oilier the fish, the denser the flesh, and the more important to cook it properly. No rare, pink-in-the-middle preparation here; it needs to reach an internal temp of 115 degrees. A bit of salt is all it needs for seasoning. Sear it quickly, then let it absorb the heat of a 250-275-degree oven for ten minutes or so. It will ooze that nutritious Omega 3 oil all over the plate, speading its rich, deep flavors to a few simply grilled summer vegetables.

The fish will taste like velvet.

Air France 046 touched down in Seattle right on schedule last Monday–the first-ever nonstop flight from CDG to SEA, water cannons spraying the Airbus A330 in a festive salute, the pilot waving French and American flags from his cockpit window. Champagne toasts and official speeches followed, blessing this long-overdue rapprochement of the Eiffel Tower and the Space Needle.

Francophile Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur said we'd finally been kissed on both cheeks by the standoffish French. But the rest of Seattle's media reacted with a yawn. No mention at all in the Post-Intelligencer, which hasn't prevented them from prominent displays of Air France ads for the past several weeks. KING's Glen Farley's workmanlike, two-minute clip covered the basics (50,000 passangers a year fly to Paris out of SeaTac, but have to make a connection), while KOMO's Akiko Fujita whined about the price of the nonstop trip. Got news for you, Akiko: if you think the flight's expensive, wait till you order the escargots when you get there (about $21 a dozen most brasseries these days).

Seriously, this is not about the cost of air travel. A nonstop flight from Seattle to Paris is about our own sense of identity. Sure, we've been able to reach London, Amsterdam or Copenhagen overnight for decades. But Paris has always eluded us. Now we can live happily in Seattle, just knowing that we can follow up today's lunch at Le Pichet with lunch tomorrow on the Champs Elysées. I tell you, it's life-changing.

What's more, some of those 65 million Frenchies now get to do the same thing: visit Seattle. Little-known fact: the average French visitor to the US is on his <i>third or fourth</i> trip. Air France knows that travel demand can't be one-sided, but until recently, Seattle was in the backwoods of French consciousness. Now, with media exposure and the boom in hi-tech, that's no longer the case. The clincher, for Air France ceo Jean-Cyril Spinetta, came at a dinner with French business leaders (carefully orchestrated by Port of Seattle officials) just a few months ago. Finally convinced of the pent-up demand from the European side, Spinetta okayed that 200-seat Airbus, promising to switch to a Boeing 777 if the extra 100 seats can be justified by the headcount.

Allons, les enfants! On va à Paris!

This is too good. First, Seattle Opera got in on the frenzy of Seattle's boosterish Pigs on Parade, whipping up an "Opera Pig" named Rusty. Then the scenic studios manager, Michael Moore, composed a 20-second "aria" for the pig to sing, and persuaded baritone John Boehr to lend it his voice.

A bit of electronic wizardry in Rusty's snout senses when people come snooping around the plaza in front of McCaw Hall, prompting Rusty to belt out "La Canzone del Maiale." Rough translation: Whatta day, whatta song, what great singing, this (snort!) song of the pig!"

Didn't sound rusty to me. More like Pigoletto. Or Pigliacci. Or Le Nozze di Pigarro …

The whole thing's on YouTube; here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/v/MR3bvgG2XgA

or try clicking on the pig.