Party clothes are coming out and chardonnays are being iced as Wine Country readies today for public premieres of the locally produced new film ?Bottle Shock.?
Sonoma and Napa residents who worked as extras in the film, shot a year ago at locations throughout the two wine counties, will dress up in ?70s garb for tonight?s 7 p.m. public premiere at the Rialto Cinemas Lakeside in Santa Rosa.
The flick is set in 1976 and tells the Hollywood-enhanced tale of the blind wine competition in Paris that stunned the second-best French and put the world on notice that Northern California had learned to make great wine.
Some of the vintage cars, trucks and scooters that appear in the film will be on display in the Rialto parking lot on Summerfield. ?Bottle Shock? will be screened there several times today.
In Sonoma, whose downtown was used liberally by director Randall Miller, hometown co-producer Brenda Lhormer (and possibly her partner and husband, Marc) will appear at the 6 and 8:30 p.m. showings at the Plaza?s Sebastiani Theatre.
Marc Lhormer will introduce the film at the premiere showing at St. Helena?s Cameo Cinema at 2:30 p.m., then scoot to Napa to appear at the 4:40 and 7:20 p.m. screenings at the Cinedome.
A number of Sonoma and Napa wine bars and restaurants are joining the fun with ?Bottle Shock?-themed tastings, wine flights or other promotions.
The movie has the creative juices flowing at Enoteca Della Santina and Girl and the Fig in Sonoma, Wine Spectrum in Santa Rosa?s Railroad Square and Napa?s Cuv? Napa, Oxbow Wine Merchant and Wine Bar, and Bounty Hunter Rare Wine Co.
And one more thing: Storied Napa winemaker Gustavo Brambila, who figures prominently in ?Bottle Shock? and is played by Freddy Rodriguez, has just opened a new Gustavo Thrace tasting room at 1021 McKinstry St., near Copia and the Oxbow Center in Napa.
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