U.S. winery that shocked Paris bought by French

PARIS (Reuters) - If you can't beat them, buy them. Michel Reybier, owner of Chateau Cos d'Estournel, a grand cru classé of Saint-Estèphe, has agreed to acquire the Chateau Montelena estate in California, from Jim Barrett.

The Napa Valley estate took top honors at the famed Judgment of Paris tasting .

European wineries are increasingly penalized in the U.S. market due to the dollar's low exchange rate to the euro. Some of the biggest names in French and Italian wine - the Rothschild family, the Antinori family - have all bought or formed joint ventures with vignerons in the New World.

"There are many similarities between Napa Valey and Bordeaux in the terroir and the way of working," Cos d'Estournel chief executive Jean Guillaume Prats told Reuters.

"The United States is the biggest market for great quality wines and it is clear that we stand a better chance on that market when we have a U.S. brand," he added.

Prats declined to give financial details of the deal but said the investment was in the tens of millions of euros.

Chateau Montelena, established in 1882, had been substantially abandoned when the Barrett family acquired it in 1972 and transformed into what has been called an American first growth.

It was one of the 11 California wineries that participated in the famed 1976 Paris Tasting, when the then-unheralded American wines bested some of France's most celebrated reds and whites.

The tasting was the subject of the film "Bottle Shock," which chronicles the events through the lives of Barrett and his son, Bo, the current winemaker. Montelena's Chardonnay won top honors.