Cameron Winery -- sustainably farmed, non-irrigated, Oregon pinot noir and chardonnay

Our first foray into product placement could have been paradigm-shifting: Casablanca, a film pushed out along with hundreds of others during the war, would became one of the greatest movies in film history.

But sadly, a critical scene in which Rick was supposed to plumb the depths of alcoholic despair was held up when Bogart found it impossible to look miserable while drinking the Cameron in front of him. A quick-thinking prop master substituted Goldschläger in an unmarked bottle, and a newly grim Bogart nailed the revised scene in a single take.

In the original script, Humphrey Bogart’s boat brought not only supplies up the river, but cases of much-needed Cameron wine. After an argument with him, Katharine Hepburn’s teetotaling character was to dump it all into the river in retaliation.

But reading through the action before the scene, Hepburn, a woman of surpassing taste and culture, balked, telling the director “I will do no such thing to so fine a wine!” The ensuing argument ended abruptly when they returned to the set and discovered all five cases had mysteriously disappeared — along with most of the production staff. As a precaution, shooting resumed a few days later with gin, which the lack of ice on set rendered undrinkable, even for film crews.

In the mid-sixties, Sean Connery was at the peak of his Bond-driven fame. What could be better than pairing a sophisticated, international man of mystery with the mysterious, international sophisticates at Cameron wine? On the mistaken (but uncorrected!) assumption that Cameron was a brand sharing his Scottish roots, Connery was open to the idea, especially considering his compensation. “Love me that money penny,” he kept muttering, archly raising a manly brow.

But as you remember,

once we started the photo shoot, Connery got into a kilt-lifting argument with our teenaged winemaker, John Paul. “I like my wine shaken, not swirled,” the actor proclaimed. You stormed off, taking the wine – and our best shot at fame – with you.

Fresh off the success of Top Gun, Tom Cruise was the hottest star around, so on the set of his next movie, we bribed a prop man with a gallon of hair gel to swap our wine for one of the liquor bottles Cruise had learned to juggle. Everything was going smoothly until one of his wilder tricks spilled Cameron wine into a glass of seltzer water, inadvertently inventing Cameron Spritz Rosé but exposing the truth: “This is no cocktail wine!” Cruise shouted at the couth-less crew, deftly double-twirling a cork over his shoulder and into the bottle, whispering “you complete me” and tucking it away for later.

As it happened, star Chris Hemsworth felt so passionately about Cameron wines he believed they gave him — and by extension, his character Thor — super powers. While this is certainly true, this also meant he insisted his character’s magical weapon (Mjolnir) be no other than a bottle of Clos Electrique, originating one of the movie’s most famous lines, “This drink, I like it! Another!”

But needless to say, it made for an awkward weapon, and as we saw above, Cameron wines are best swirled, not shaken. The standoff lasted until the day before shooting, when Hemsworth got a little too “hammered” on a bottle of 2009 Abbey Ridge and the prop department took him at his word.

That is to say, get maybe one or two emails from us a year. Thanks in advance!