New documentary announced - Sour Grapes

Dogwoof has come on board to handle pre-sales for the documentary film Sour Grapes, currently in production, which tells the story of one of the greatest wine fraud cases in the USA.

Directed by Jerry Rothwell, the film unfolds as a heist thriller taking us on a insider trip into the vintage wine market. 

The deal was brokered by Vesna Cudic, Head of TV Sales and Acquisitions at Dogwoof with Al Morrow, Producer, Met Film Production and Catherine Simeon Producer, Faites Un Voeu.

Vesna Cudic: “In following the meteoric rise and fall of wine fraudster Rudi Kurniawan,  Sour Grapes opens the curtain on the secretive and highly profitable world of vintage wine trade, and chartsthe first ever wine fraud that has ended up in the court of law. We are delighted to see Jerry Rothwell returning to secrets and lies, the theme he so cleverly explored in the Grierson Award winning Deep Water.”

This is the third partnership between Dogwoof and Met Film Production, following the international sales representation and UK distribution deals for Town of Runners by Jerry Rothwell (2012) and Village at the End of the World by Sarah Gavron and David Katznelson (2013). With Sour Grapes, Dogwoof is coming on board at the production stage after seeing the initial pitch at Sheffield Doc/Fest, completion date is set for late 2014.

Al Morrow: “We are thrilled to be working with Dogwoof again. They always look to find the best international distribution partners, and deliver innovative campaigns, which boost the profile of our films globally.”

Sour Grapes is set against the collision of two worlds: rural Burgundy, where for centuries the arcane craft of wine production has been handed down through generations of families; and the super fast, super rich world of New York and Los Angeles during the finance boom of the early 2000s. During that time, vintage wine was taken up by the new rich both as an investment and as a marker of taste, status and class.  Crashing into these elite was a Chinese Indonesian migrant called Rudy Kurniawan, who quickly established a reputation for expertise in burgundy.  He was, it was rumoured, a wine savant who had an expert memory for taste, a generous host offering rare wines from his huge cellarand in 2006he made $35 million in 2 wine auctions from the sale of his wine. Then in 2008 a French wine producer, Laurent Ponsot, realised that wine from his family's domain was being auctioned by Kurniawanfrom a year they hadn't produced it. That day, he says, he took the first plane to New York, and thus begun his crusade.