Bottle Shock

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More About

• Rachel Taylor
• Napa
• Freddy Rodriguez
• Wine
• Food and Cooking

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Tickets to this special outdoor screening include 15 wine tastings, cheese, and chocolate. This mellow comedic celebration of the California wine country features some handsome young talent (including Rachel Taylor, Eliza Dushku, and Freddie Rodriguez). Bottle Shock is based on true events in 1976, when upstart American labels got their chance against the haughty French in a blind tasting that all—perhaps including the event’s sponsor, here played by Alan Rickman—expected the French to win. The movie could’ve done more with his arch, gourmand-out-of-water character. Any flick that features Rickman—on a road trip in dusty, uncouth, unfamiliar America—disdainfully eating KFC in a yellow AMC Gremlin is a nice rebuttal to wine snobs and movie snobs alike. (Or car snobs, for that matter.) If you’re not an oenophile who knows the famous outcome to the tasting, you can guess it anyway. Bill Pullman plays the struggling owner of Napa’s Chateau Montelena (just recently sold to the French, in fact). If you have a few bottles of its chardonnay from that bicentennial year in your cellar, they’ve probably appreciated quite nicely. As for the movie, it’s scenic, pleasant, full of gorgeous aerial vistas sure to inspire a Napa Valley driving-tasting tour. Movie begins at dusk. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER
Sun., Aug. 16, 5:30 p.m., 2009