Jonathan Nossiter’s “Mondovino” arrives on the backwash of the surprise hit “Sideways,” that other wine-themed movie. But anyone expecting a light-hearted diversion is hereby put on red alert. Mr. Nossiter is angry at what he sees as the attack on traditional values of local winemaking by big business and by powerful consultants whose client wineries are favored by wine-rating publications.

A carefree opening coconut-harvesting sequence in Brazil puts the viewer off guard. But the real theme of “Mondovino”is soon stated by an old vintner, eyes shaded by a straw cap, standing in the midst of pastoral vineyards and fields in Sardinia. Here,the indigenous, beguilingly fragrant Malvasia grape is in retreat. “People have been carried away by commercialism,” he laments. “They’ve lost their identity. They don’t know where they came from anymore.”

Even as the old vintner says these words, the sound of a jetliner intrudes, followed by a Mephistophelean cackle as the film cuts to the rear seat of a chauffeured Mercedes sedan rolling through the Bordeaux wine country. It’s a cackle we’ll hear often in this film, and it belongs to Michel Rolland, earth’s most famous wine consultant, who at this moment is fielding cell phone calls as he heads to his next appointment at Chateau Le Gay, a small property in Pomerol.

There he samples and spits the new wine. “Micro-oxygenate that tank,” he barks. A quite new technology, microoxygenation is what it sounds like: a slow “drip” of oxygen bubbles from tubes into vats of young wine which accelerates their softening. Thanks to this process, the traditional slow way of barrel and bottle aging is largely bypassed. Hurry up, wine, so we can sell you faster.

Micro-oxygenation, invented in southwestern France to tame a particularly tannic grape called Tannat and now widely practiced elsewhere, stands for much of what Mr. Nossiter hates about the new world of wine. In place of a more or less unsullied link between vineyard and consumer, Mr. Rolland and his ilk bring us an internationalized style of wine.

A Cabernet Sauvignon blend vinified in Chile, for example, may taste like one made in Tuscany or Argentina or California, maybe even in India – all places where Mr. Rolland consults. These wines will be ripe, rich, and redolent of new oak barrels. Few if any quirky, soil-inflected flavors will intrude.”These wines have a body, structure, and color that no soil can give,” a wine-shop owner in Tuscany tells Mr. Nossiter. And that’s the problem. The wines may taste good, but they have been deracinated.

Why would wineries spent heavily to chase after the same style of wine? They are lured, as “Mondovino” makes clear, by the hope of getting high scores on the 100-point rating scales used by Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate and the Wine Spectator magazine. Higher prices and sold-out vintages are sure to follow. If that means severing the bond between a traditional wine from its particular plot of soil, well, that’s progress.

The toothsome face of corporate wine globalization in “Mondovino” is that of the Robert Mondavi and his son Robert. Not content to have pioneered fine wine in the Napa Valley, the family expanded internationally. As father and son are interviewed, the camera zooms in so close to Michael Mondavi’s mouth that I was reminded of Bruce, the scary shark whose gaping jaws fill the screen in “Finding Nemo.”

Mr. Nossiter visits Aniane, a sleepy French town where the Mondavis sought to buy up land for a presumably splashy new winery. After Aniane’s communist mayor blocked that effort, the Napa-based wine giant headed to Italy to buy a stake in Tenuta dell’Ornellaia, a “Super-Tuscan” estate. In 2002, the Mondavis bought the rest of Ornellaia for an estimated $30-35 million, only to “flip it” to the Frescobaldi family that same year.

Many are those, I suspect, who will regret having signed releases to appear in “Mondovino,” but none more so than James Suckling, a wine-rating editor of the Wine Spectator. Mr. Suckling lives, or at least did when filmed, in Il Burro, an adorable old Tuscan village owned by Ferragamo, the Italian fashion house that also makes wine.

Mr. Suckling awarded an “outstanding” score of 91 to one of his landlord’s wines, Il Burro 2001, giving at least the appearance of non-objectivity. Interviewed in the Ferragamo office in Il Burro, Mr. Suckling prattles on about how his parents’ generation drank French wine, while his generation drinks Italian. That struck me as ridiculous. Asked by Mr. Nossiter if the Wine Spectator invented the term “Super-Tuscan,” Mr. Suckling modestly casts down his eyes and allows that “some people say I invented it.”

While Mr. Suckling is an easy mark for Mr. Nossiter, Robert Parker is a purposefully moving target. Interviewed at home in his Maryland farmhouse, Mr. Parker insists that his power “is not something I ever sought” and that he has “brought an American view to this elitist beverage.”Quite a different view comes from a French bureaucrat who claims that “Robert Parker incites people to fraud” by taking whatever means they must to get the “concentrated, deep-colored wines” needed to “make Mr. Parker happy.” Mr. Nossiter also tries to find cause and effect between wines that have benefited from Mr.Rolland’s attentions and high scores awarded by Mr. Parker. Certainly, the two titans of wine taste seem to like the same stuff and to like each other.

Is Mr. Nossiter on target in attacking the globalization of wine? In some ways, yes. Wine uniquely reflects its soil, drainage, tilt to the sun, morning fogs, indigenous yeasts, day-to-night temperature differences, and myriad other characteristics that the French sum up as terroir. When wine is manipulated and standardized to become a corporate commodity instead of a particular vintner’s labor of love, one more aspect of earth’s diversity is lost. Super-Tuscan wines, for example, can be gorgeous to drink. But many are dominated by French grape blends and French oak. Their sense of place becomes confusing. In making them so glamorous, what has been won, and what has been lost?

But another truth in our current wine world is ignored by “Mondovino”: Never before have so many thousands of different wines jostled for space on the shelves of wine retailers. Some are commodities, like the mass-marketed Yellowtail and Mondavi’s Woodbridge. They deliver consistent taste, year in and year out, and suit customers who want reliability, not adventure, in a bottle. Scads of other lesser-selling wines, on the other hand, differ with each new vintage or winemaker, and not necessarily for the better. They can be downright quirky. These are the wines that engage true wine buffs, and my observation is that they are multiplying rather than diminishing in availability.

A case in point: Near his movie’s end, Mr. Nossiter visits a poor Indian wine grower, Antonio Cabezas, in Cafayate, nestled in a remote high valley in northern Argentina. Mr. Cabezas has a small vineyard planted to Torrontes, a little known domestic grape. Mr. Nossiter loves this fragrant white wine so much that the grower gives him a bottle. I also love Torrentes from Cafayate, having first tasted it a few weeks ago here in the city. It was made by Susana Balbo, one of Argentina’s few female winemakers. I recommended her Crios de Susana Balbos Torrontes, in this newspaper’s Urban Vintage column a few weeks ago.

Is any wine-seller going to make big bucks by selling Torrontes? I doubt it. It’s available because an importer loved it, a few wine shops were willing to carry it, and a handful of adventurous customers are willing to try it. There are countless other offbeat wines out there, hoping to be noticed, that are the product of some winemaker’s passion. Pace, Mr. Nossiter, the diversity of wine ain’t dead yet.

Until April 4 (209 W. Houston, between Sixth Avenue and Varick, 212-727-8112).