I have just seen the movie "Bottle Shock," which through distaste I have re-named "Bottle Schlock." This is a movie that I don't recommend to wine lovers, film lovers or truth lovers.

It claims to be based on the true story of a historic wine tasting that took place in Paris in 1976 and revolutionized the wine world.

The tasting was organized by Steven Spurrier and Patricia Gallagher of the Academie du Vin in Paris. It was the 200th birthday of the United States and Ms. Gallagher, an American, thought an appropriate way to celebrate would be to bring some American wines to France to be tasted blind by French judges, along with some of France's prestigious bottles.

For centuries, Bordeaux and Burgundies were acknowledged as the finest red wines in the world and Burgundian chardonnay and German rieslings won the top rankings for whites. At the time, California wines were little known and rarely consumed outside the United States.

Mr. Spurrier and Ms. Gallagher were colleagues of mine at the Academie du Vin for 10 years between 1978 and 1988 (I progressed from avid student to dishwasher to office flunky to wine educator and eventually a partner there). I was not present at the 1976 tasting but am well acquainted with the details of that day. None of them were as they are portrayed in "Bottle Shock."

We all know that movies often take dramatic liberties with truth but this film goes beyond any acceptable levels.

The most egregious fiction in the film is depicting Jim Barrett leaving law to become a winemaker and produce the winning 1973 Chateau Montelena chardonnay.

Mr. Barrett was a real estate lawyer from Southern California. In 1972 he and his client Ernie Hahn, a developer of shopping centers, purchased Chateau Montelena winery, which had been inactive since 1934. Each man owned 45 percent, with Leland Paschich, a Napa businessman who had bought the Montelena property in the 1960s, maintaining a 10 percent interest.

The majority partners felt they needed someone local to manage the project and Mr. Paschich was the logical choice. His first job was to find a winemaker and in 1972, he recruited Mick Grgich of Robert Mondavi winery, where he was in charge of quality control.

But Mr. Barrett continued to practice law. He would fly to Calistoga in Napa Valley several times a month to look in on the wine operations, which were under the direction of Mr. Grgich.

In the film Mr. Grgich does not exist and Mr. Barrett assumes Mr. Grgich's thoughts when he states: "The best fertilizer for a vineyard is the owner's footsteps." That's an old saying Mr. Grgich was known to preach.

At times the film seems to be more about the difficult relationship Mr. Barrett had with his college-age son, Bo, than it is about making wine in Napa. The script writers seemed to find it necessary to include a love triangle and some racial tensions between the locals and the Hispanics who do much of the labor in the vineyards. These elements were not part of the real story, just more Hollywood fluff.

My major problem with this film is the grossly unfair portrayal of Mr. Spurrier as a bumbling snob and a twit who was looking for publicity for his foundering wine business in Paris. In fact, Mr. Spurrier was and is a highly respected figure in the wine world.

In 1976, the Caves de la Madeleine, his retail wine shop in Paris, was recognized as one of the best in the city and business there was brisk. The Academie du Vin -- where he and Ms. Gallagher and Jon Winroth, wine critic for the International Herald Tribune, taught wine-tasting classes in French and English -- was the first such program in France. The classes were sanctioned and subsidized by the French government as continuing education for sommeliers in French restaurants.

Because the Academie was a leader in the wine-tasting field, wine professionals from around the world would stop in to discuss the latest wine developments. Frequently, they brought bottles of wine from their particular regions to taste with Academie personnel.

In the early 1970s, France was the undisputed king of fine wine but when the staff at the Academie du Vin tasted some of the Napa wines, they were surprised to find the quality much better than expected. Mr. Spurrier was not looking for publicity for his businesses but instead wanted to show the French the extent of the changes taking place in California wineries. It was in that spirit that the famous tasting was conceived.

The scene in the movie where Mr. Spurrier checks in for his return flight from San Francisco to Paris with two cases of wine never happened. Being an experienced traveler who knew that he could not clear French customs with such cargo: Mr. Spurrier enlisted a group of California winemakers, who were traveling to France for a tour of the vineyards, to bring the wine. By coincidence, Mr. Barrett and his wife were a part of that group. (Why is Mr. Barrett divorced in the film?)

I was incensed at the film's choice of a site for the wine tasting, which is a field with cows grazing and curious children sneaking peeks into what seems to be the ruins of a chapel. To critically taste wine in the midst of farm odors would be impossible.

The real tasting was held in an ornately decorated, 19th-century banquet room at the Intercontinental Hotel in Paris. Contrary to what the film portrays, there were neither cows nor gamins in sight -- nor was Bo Barrett present. Another wild liberty with the truth is the film's dramatic tale of "bottle shock," a post-bottling problem that in this case was a temporary change of color (but not taste), possibly due to a lack of oxygen.

In the film, the white wine turns copper and is dumped. There is a crazy race by Bo Barrett to the University of California at Davis to consult with enologists and the wine is "rescued." This never happened with the 1973 Chateau Montelena chardonnay.

One spot of history correctly depicted in "Bottle Shock" is the presence at the tasting of George Taber, who at the time was Paris bureau chief for Time magazine.

In 2005, Mr. Taber published a book that is much more than a history of the tasting. "The Judgment of Paris" is an engaging exploration of the lives of the major players in the event and the aftershocks that resulted from it.

This is definitely a case where one should simply read the book and skip the movie.

The real story is gripping. The fictionalized version is schlock.