2008 - Bottle Shock

Alan as Steven Spurrier

Quote :

Bottle Shock is a 2008 film that tells the story of the events that led up to the Judgment of Paris in 1976, when California wine beat French wine in a blind taste test. It stars Alan Rickman, Chris Pine and Bill Pullman and is directed by Randall Miller, who wrote the screenplay along with Jody Savin and Ross Schwartz.[1] It premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.[1]

Sommelier and wine shop owner Steven Spurrier, a British expatriate living in Paris, concocts a plan to hold a blind taste-test intended to introduce Parisians to the quality wines coming from elsewhere in the world (and save his business in the process). He travels to the not-yet-famous Napa Valley in search of contestants for his Judgment of Paris taste test, where a chance meeting introduces him to floundering vintner Jim Barrett of Chateau Montelena. Barrett wants no part in the competition, believing it is all a set up designed by the French to humiliate New World wine producers. However Barrett's son, Bo, secretly passes Spurrier a couple of bottles of the Chateau's chardonnay for the competition. The chardonnay, however, has turned brown in the bottles, causing Barrett Sr. to call for the whole vintage to be carted away for dumping. But Bo discovers the brown color is only temporary and manages to recover the vintage with the help of a local bar owner, who had intercepted the bottles on the way to the dump. Bo is then asked to travel to Paris to represent the Napa valley vitners in the wine contest. After tallying the scores from the eight Parisian judges, Spurrier is shocked to find that Montelena has won the chardonnay competition. The report is featured in an article of Time and restaurants all around America are asked continually for the wine (Chateau Montelena Chardonnay 1973) and forced to state that they don't have it. This twist of fate and the resultant oenological epiphany forever changes the fortunes of Napa Valley wineries and the global wine industry as a whole, as it is revealed that French wines are in fact not unbeatable, prompting vintners world wide to attempt fine wine production. In the end, the futures of the characters are revealed. Jim Barrett still makes wine at 81 at the time of this film's release, although Bo now runs the Chateau. A bottle of Montelena Chardonnay 1973 and the red wine, also from California, that had won the same competition were given a case at the Smithsonian Institute. Steven Spurrier hosted another contest, this time with full confidence that French wine would win. California won again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_Shock

I love this movie, and reading this makes me want to go watch it again.

I know, it was such a cute movie. But the mustache.... ugh!

Ugh, the mustache...

"I am technically not French."

Alan talking French is funny... Well, French with english accent is always kind of funny...