Apocalypse Now director Francis Ford Coppola is suing a US bottle manufacturer over claims that it ruined 55,000 cases of wine from his winery by supplying faulty bottles and screwcaps.

Coppola, whose other hit films include the Godfather trilogy, is suing Vinocor USA over the allegations of faulty packs for its Encyclopedia range of wines, according to reports.

No sum of damages has been specified. However, documents filed in a Californian court claim that the director's wine company, Francis Ford Coppola Presents, paid Vincor around $685,000 for packaging last year after it gave the firm an order in 2007 for the custom bottles and oversized screw caps.

The lawsuit claims that many of the bottles had bent necks, chipped glass and uneven bases, while many of the screw caps were badly made or bent after shipping.

It goes on to allege that when replacements were supplied, they leaked and let in air that oxidised the wine.

"Virtually all of the wine produced and bottled in the 55,000 cases of the Encyclopedia collection was materially degraded or destroyed as a result of the defects in the bottles, screw caps and packaging products provided by Vinocor USA," documents for the lawsuit said.

Luis Pinto, a Vinocor executive, told news agency Bloomberg that the company's lawyers would begin talks this week with Coppola's lawyers in the hope of resolving the conflict.

Coppola's Encyclopedia wine collections are drawn from different regions and are designed to inform drinkers how aspects such as history, geography, food and religion contribute to a wine's production and consumption, according to the lawsuit.