Whose wine will reign supreme?
That’s the question that will be asked and answered in “Best Bottle,” a reality TV series scheduled to begin production in late August in Sonoma and Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
The show will feature teams of wannabe “rock star” winemakers from California and Oregon who will engage in a “brutal” state vs. state battle designed to measure their “physical and mental endurance, a native intelligence, and shrewdness” in crafting their “best bottle” of wine. Each team will be led by an established winemaker who will coach his or her charges through the competition.
The winning “Cellar Rat,” has contestants have been dubbed, will be judged by a panel of cork dorks and views, and will earn the Golden Grapes Trophy, a grand prize of $100,000, a new car, and a “lucrative” wine-making deal that lets King Rat bottle one vintage under the Best Bottle label and tout it with a specially designed advertising campaign.
The show is the creation of the folks behind the Best Bottle wine club, an online wine-purchasing site, who’ve brought in other wine, media and marketing professionals to get the show off the ground. When and where it will air, nobody knows yet. (Or at least they’re not saying.) But keep your corkscrews handy.