Wine wars on film
According to this New York Times story (registration required), a new documentary titled Mondovino is causing a stir amongst both wine lovers and film goers (and is due to arrive on US screens this Spring):
The film landed amid a wine crisis: consumption in France has been dropping, and some native producers feel threatened by an invasion of wines from abroad and pressured to make more universally accessible wines. More than a wine documentary, "Mondovino" is a passionate defense of the individuality of small wine producers in a more standardized world. Its unflattering portrayal of advocates of homogenization has angered some in the French wine establishment, but Mr. Nossiter, who calls "Mondovino" a "militant" film, insists that he was fair and respectful toward all of the participants.
...The wine world is a microcosm of the world at large, he added, and "Mondovino" is above all an old-fashioned look at the nature and uses of power. "If you'd made a wine film in the fourth century B.C.," he said, "you would have observed the end of the Greek empire and seen the Greeks trying to colonize their last,Iraq-like gambit in the Sicilian expedition at the end of the Peloponnesian War - planting vines, making war. Act of civilization, act of imperial power. I think this is still true today."