Jonathan Nossiter spent three and a half years interviewing vintners all over the world for this documentary. He travels to vineyards and vine merchants in France, Italy, Chile, and California. He illustrates the deep connection that traditional winemakers have to their land, their stocks, their wines. But through the influence of large wine companies and big marketing campaigns winemaking worldwide is changing dramatically. The vintners of hundred-year old vineries are being edged out of the market.

American wine reviewers and California vineyards get a particularly bad rep. Californian new-world wines are faulted for being aged in new rather than old oak barrels, for aiming to appeal to the masses with their unsophisticated aroma, for lacking the character and acidity for more gradually aged traditional wines, and for being produced by the self-important nouveau riche.

Conversely, the film has many moving moments observing the humble family owners of some old French and Italian estates. We learn interesting things about their wine philosophies (wine with an edgy character that unfold only with time), their struggles to keep the business alive (wines full of character don't always sell well, and big-time American businessmen are lining up buy real estate), and their role in a wine history that seems to be disappearing.

It's a pity that Jonathan Nossiter ruins his otherwise commendable film by some extremely lousy cinematography. I understand that he probably wasn't able to afford a professional cameraman. After all, his travelling across the world, from Burgundy to Sardinia, Florence to New York, Argentina to California, probably cost quite a bit of money. But still, why didn't he take a tripod with him?

Too many shots are just too shaky. Why doesn't he keep his camera on his conversation partner, and instead keeps swinging it around to whatever else might be interesting (oh, look, there's a moving forklift). What's the idea behind the repeated zooming-in on the interviewees' eyeballs in the middle of the conversation? Very annoying. Same with the drive-by landscape shots. Or, save that, handheld landscape sweeps. Given the technical difficulties, two and a half hours is a long time to suffer. Surely, we could have done without some of the silly dog scenes.