Bottle Shock

Directed by Randall Miller.

Featuring: Bill Pullman, Chris Pine, Alan Rickman, Dennis Farina, Freddy Rodriguez, Rachael Taylor

The movie opens with a breath-taking, IMAX-esque sequence of aerial shots over the Napa Valley while the opening credits roll. As the movie’s story begins, the viewer finds him/herself in a cramped, dark, quiet wine boutique in Paris, run by an Englishman and seemingly patronized by one American (and a Milwaukee native at that, played by Dennis Farina). Thus is set the contrasts between two cultures as a showdown is set which is the basis of this movie.



In 1976 the Englishman, Steve Spurrier (Alan Rickman), a connoisseur of the French grape, hosts a blind taste test outside Paris between the finest French vintages and the upstart Napa Valley vintages. The movie is based on this obscure event to create an underdog story.



The title of the movie one might expect would come from the shock of the results of that taste test, in which the American grapes prevailed over France’s “sour grapes.” Yet the term is a term referring to a late-in-fermentation “shock” when oxygen comes in contact with the wine. This “bottle shock” plays a dramatic scene late in the movie.



There are struggles throughout the movie. The major conflict is between Jim (Bill Pullman) and Bo Barrett (Chris Pine). Jim is the father and owner of the struggling winery Chateau Montelena. Bo is his son, a seeming polar opposite to his father who loves wine and women, although he is more judicious with his choice of wines.



There is the conflict with Steve Spurrier (isn’t he a college football coach?) and his struggling Academie du Vin wine shop. He seeks to boost sales with a contest between French wines and the new breed American wines from Napa. Of course he is egged on by a self-proclaimed Milwaukeean (Dennis Farina), who urges Spurrier to expand his wine offering to build his business. This dynamic features that tension between wine as art and wine as commodity to be marketed.



There are other subterfuges of conflict such as the intern (Rachael Taylor) who is torn between Bo and a Chateau Montelena employee, (Freddy Rodriguez). Both men are friends who enjoy wine, although FR’s passion and commitment for wine-making runs deeper than Bo’s.



Overall the movie was enjoyable, if contrived in places. It seeks to dress an historical event with the trappings of human failings and foibles. It touches on class envy as well as themes of Old World versus New World. The period autos added to the touch of timeliness as a VW original beetle and an AMC Gremlin jaunt across the screen. And in the end, I am guessing Steve Spurrier’s words are “prophetic” in a 20/20 hinsight sort of way as he “foresees” that the defeat of the French (wine) by the American’s (wine) is a portent of wine drinkers drinking wine from “Australia, South America, even China.” As that line was said, a lady several rows behind said, “That’s true.”