Bottle Shock might not be the movie for everyone.

If you don’t like California, new world wine, chardonnay, beautiful shots of wine country, gorgeous people, the 1970s, underdogs, Napa or America in general, you might want to avoid this movie.

But if you’re fond of any of those, you’re likely to fall in love with Bottle Shock, the 2008 movie, which is based very loosely on the vineyard-shaking 1976 Judgment of Paris, where California wine bested the French in a blind taste test.

Against a lush-backdrop of wine country perfection, the film follows wine shop owner and British ex-pat Steven Spurrier as he dreams up a blind taste test of California and French wines. He visits Napa, then a little county with big ideas about making wine that’s largely being ignored by the rest of the world. There he meets Jim Barrett (played by Bill Pullman) and his hippie-son Bo (played by Chris Pine). Jim Barrett is doing his darndest to create the best chardonnay he can at Chateau Montelena and resents Spurrier’s attitude of French superiority. Lurking around the corners is UC Davis hottie Sam Fulton (played by Rachael Taylor) and Gustavo Brambila (played by “Six Feet Under” darling Freddy Rodriguez) as a budding winemaker.

Spurrier is shocked by the quality of the wine. As a total old-world wine snob, one of my favorite scenes is of him sitting on a terrace in the setting sun, relishing every drop of California wine. He tours and tries the wine, and brings it back (in a hilarious airport scene) to France for the taste test.

There are a few mishaps, romantic and wine-related, before the actual Judgment of Paris. But this is such a fun movie with gorgeous cinematography, I strongly encourage you to pop open a bottle of your favorite Napa wine and settle in for a fun ride.

Five recommended Napa wine producers:
Chateau Montelena (which produced the winning chardonnay)
Cakebread
Chappellet
Daglia Canyon
St. Supery