- Jim Barrett: Why don't I like you?
- Steven Spurrier: Because you think I'm an arsehole. And I'm not, really. I'm just British and, well... you're not.
- Steven Spurrier: "Wine is sunlight, held together by water." The poetic wisdom of the Italian physicist, philosopher, and stargazer, Galileo Galilei. It all begins with the soil, the vine, the grape. The smell of the vineyard - like inhaling birth. It awakens some ancestral, some primordial... anyway, some deeply imprinted, and probably subconscious place in my soul.
- Maurice: [on a Britisher saying Californians make wine in unorthodox ways] Where I'm from, they call it a left-handed compliment. They don't have a name for it in England: it's too ingrained in their culture.
- [first lines]
- Bo Barrett: [voice-over during a vineyard pan] It wasn't always like this. Before Paris, people didn't drink our wine. I mean, my friends did. But you could hardly consider their palates discerning...
- Bo Barrett: Hell, we were farmers... sort of...
- [pan to empty bottles of Montelena label and several early twenties/late teens smoking hookah]
- Gustavo Brambila: You people, you think you can just buy your way into this. You cannot do it that way.
- Jim Barrett: Alright...
- Gustavo Brambila: You have to have it in your blood, you have to grow up with the soil underneath your nails, the smell of the grapes in the air that you breathe. The cultivation of the vine was an art form. The refinement of the vine is a religion that requires pain and desire and sacrifice.
- Sam: To Gustavo Brambila, renegade, who worships the sanctity of the vine.
- Gustavo Brambila: And can't afford a full tank of gas.
- [they toast]
- Steven Spurrier: Great wine is great art, my friend. I am, in effect, a shepherd... whose mission is to offer the public another form of great art and to guide its appreciation thereof.
- Maurice: Well, a shepherd... by definition, needs a flock. And a business, by necessity... needs customers.
- Steven Spurrier: So, if I were to subscribe to that proviso would you be considered a customer?
- Maurice: No. No, I would be considered... an enthusiastic... advocate.
- Jim Barrett: Why don't I like you?
- Steven Spurrier: 'Cause you think I'm an asshole. And I'm not really. I'm just British, and, well, you're not.