I think you are onto something here.
Distance, like time, can magnify the importance and stature of things making them into legends.

Having just returned from Europe I agree that too often we ‘idealize’ the wine culture there.

Here is some food for thought. I am proposing the ‘wine culture’ changes the further away it get from it sources. By this I mean that the wine culture that exists in and near wine growing regions is very different than those in parts of our country far from wine production.
The wine culture of Napa and Walla are much more similiar than those of Sonoma and Cleveland for instance. I think one could argue that the same thing exists in Europe; we typically think of ‘European’ wine culture as France, Italy and maybe Spain and Germany. What is the wine culture of Sweden? Again I think the meaning and ‘value’ or ‘role’ of wine changes the further one moves away from the origins of production.
Any thoughts?

Yeah, the past does get romanticized.

There’s a book coming out by this marketing prof http://tinyurl.com/d3d3c8 that I’m excited to read–Drummond, K. 2006 (forthcoming). “Consuming the Da Vinci Code,” International Bestseller.

He talks about “production reconsumption”– how people wanted to relive/reconsume the Da Vinci Code when the movie came out. This also happened with Sideways, and is now happening with Slumdog Millionaire: http://tinyurl.com/aq3dww.