THE NEXT GREAT FOODIE MOVIE?

Considering the success of Sideways, and even for that matter, Ratatouille, it's not surprising that one of the hottest tickets at this year's Sundance Film Festival has been for screenings of the new wine movie, Bottle Shock.

The film decants the story of the early days of California wine making, and features the now infamous, blind Paris wine tasting of 1976 that has come to be known as the "Judgment of Paris."

The event was a turning point for the California wine industry when French wines were compared to California wines in a blind tasting. In both the red and white categories, judges preferred California's wines, solidifying the Sonoma and Napa Valleys' place in the future of wine production. As the catch phrase for the movie poster puts it: "The French never knew what hit them." History records that they were, to state it mildly, not very happy about it.

The film was shot last summer in the Sonoma Valley area (in particular at Beuna Vista Vineyards) with a cast that included Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman, Chris Pine, Rachael Taylor, Freddy Rodríguez and Eliza Dushku. The rumour in circulation that Danny DeVito had been hired to portray winery owner Mike Grgich turned out to be untrue.

See the trailer here.

And the low-down on the plot here.

But could the bottle be corked?