Well - - you had to know it would happen.

The indie surprise movie of the year Sideways gets an Oscar nomination and suddenly wine’s popularity in the U.S. explodes – not to mention the popularity of Pinot Noir, which prior to the movie had more of a cult fan following and now, is seeing growth as much as 15% in some cities.

In addition, a Harris Poll released last week found that a full 73 percent of U.S. wine drinkers say they would consider buying Italian wine, but only 44 percent say they would do so. Australian? 52% consider it, only 32% do.

To heighten the blow to the import wine industry, analysts announced today that the U.S. could now become the largest wine market by 2008. [However, take note, Americans won't become the world's biggest wine drinkers. That title goes to the Italians.]

To combat all the negative reports, import wine distributors and national wine bureaus are quickly producing newsworthy surveys to prove their own popularity and appeal here in the U.S.

Infact, the Australian Wine Bureau in tandem with match.com, just released a fun new survey today. Polling 2,300 single men and women, the survey seeks to pair your wine preference with a personality.

According to the survey:

- 62 percent believe that their date's choice of beverage provides insight into their lifestyle, and 52 percent felt that it is indicative of their personality. - Single Americans overwhelmingly choose wine to reflect their personalities and lifestyles on the all-important first date over any other beverage; including beer, specialty cocktails, sparkling water and soda. Specifically, single people are two times more likely to order wine over a specialty cocktail or soda and four times more likely to order wine instead of beer.

Personality perceptions associated with the top U.S. imported wine countries:

- Ordering a wine from Australia conveys the message that a person is adventurous (62 percent) and fun (32 percent).

- A person that drinks French wine is viewed as pretentious (76 percent) and high-maintenance (65 percent).

- Sexy (40 percent) and stylish (37 percent) were personality traits used to describe a person who orders a wine from Italy.

Additional survey findings:

- When asked which person they would be the most interested in meeting, respondents overwhelmingly chose someone who orders wine from Australia (53 percent) over someone who orders a vodka from Russia (18 percent), a beer from Belgium (15 percent) or a Port from Portugal (14 percent).

While more and more Americans may be turning away from hard liquor and cocktails popular for the last few years, many import wines, greater in cost because of taxes and import fees, will still have a struggle in the American marketplace where, according to Harris, over 63% of the public does not spend more than $14 on a bottle of wine.

What does that mean for us? Scared that they will be outdone by their domestic counterparts, trying to maintain market share… and hitching onto the latest wave of wine’s budding popularity in the U.S., France, Australia and Italy are rushing in to hire new ad agencies [Euro RSCG Magnet added Philippe de Rothschild Wines to their client roster last week…expect more announcements soon] and booting up ad spending in the U.S. to gain a presence among their American counterparts.

Don’t know about you, but I’ll drink to that.