Rickman film leaves a nasty taste

Fans of the 2004 hit comedy Sideways, set in California wine country, had been hoping for another treat this year when Bottle Shock, with Alan Rickman (above right), opens. But the word from the Sundance Film Festival, where the film had its world premiere at the weekend, is not good.

Directed by Randall Miller, Bottle Shock tells the true story of a pivotal moment in wine-making history. In 1976, a British wine merchant called Steven Spurrier (played by Rickman) organised a blind tasting in Paris where he invited wine experts to judge the best wines from the Napa Valley against the best from France's most famous chateaux. To the horror of the French wine industry, the Californian wines took top honours. Time magazine reported the shock result, a watershed moment in the emergence of Napa as a world-class wine region.

Rickman, according to one review, plays the wine connoisseur "as if he's Peter Sellers playing Alan Rickman playing the character... a weird and wildly entertaining performance, completely out of step with everything else in the movie". Other cast members, including Bill Pullman, Chris Pine, Eliza Dushku and Rachael Taylor (above left), are unable to rescue it.

Spurrier himself was furious when he saw the screenplay and realised he was being portrayed as an effete English snob. "I'm extremely angry at the deeply insulting and inaccurate way I - and my business - were portrayed,'' he said.

Remarkably, given the arcane subject matter, a second Hollywood film about the same incident is in production, but delayed by the writers' strike. Called The Judgment of Paris, it is based on the book of the same name written by George Taber, a journalist present at the 1976 tasting.