WHAT ARE THE BEST MOVIES ABOUT WINE? THE WINE MAGAZINE “THE DRINK BUSINESS” COMPILED ITS RANKING, “TOP TEN WINE MOVIES” AND THE FIRST THREE POSITIONS WENT TO “SIDEWAYS”, “BOTTLE SHOCK” AND “A GOOD YEAR”

From a walk-on to the star role of the film, like all great actors, wine began its film history as a simple extra. Then it slowly began to carve out a more and more important role to finally become the real star of the show. There are many films that talk about wine and many that use wine as the main plot. But what are the best movies? The Drinks Business, one of the most important wine publications, compiled its own ranking of the "Top 10 Wine Movies".
On the podium, in third place, Ridley Scott's "A Good Year" with Russell Crowe, the story of an American businessman who leaves his job to run a wine farm in the heart of Provence.

The silver medal goes to "Bottle Shock," a 2009 film directed by Randall Miller where Bo (Chris Pine), manages a winery in California and decides to represent Napa Valley in a competition dominated mainly by French wineries. The palm (or the vine in this case) goes instead to "Sideways", Alexander Payne's film that consecrated Paul Giamatti to the public of the "big screen".

The top five also includes "French Kiss" (number 4) by Lawrence Kasdaer, a love story around a necklace hidden by a thief under a grapevine, and "Corked" (number 5) a "mockumentary" about the 2005 vintage. At position 6 , "From Ground to Glass", a documentary by Robert Dafoe, shot on a shoestring budget around the Santa Ynez Valley, which sees the director himself grappling with the winemaking process. Seventh position goes to "The Muppet Movie" featuring a brief cameo by Steve Martin as a waiter / sommelier, when Kermit the Frog takes Miss Piggy out to dinner and orders a bottle of Champagne.

The movie "Mondovino" (number 8) by Jonathan Nossiter, introduces and criticizes the impact of globalization on wine regions and in particular the influence of the critic Robert Parker and oenologist Michel Rolland who defined and imposed a standard international style, to the detriment of the individual small producers who have perfected traditional wines with the typical characteristics of the production territory ("terroir").
In ninth place we find a "vintage" film, "This earth is mine". It is the oldest movie in the ranking: directed by Henry King in 1959, it tells the story of the lying, bribery and internal conflicts of a winery in the '30s. The last film in the The Drinks Business "Top 10 Wine Movies" is "The Secret of Santa Victoria" a film by Stanley Kramer in which Anthony Quinn, Mayor of the Italian town of Santa Vittoria, refuses to let the German Nazis invading Italy take away all the wine of his valley, starring among others Virna Lisi and Anna Magnani.