Film Review - Corked

Corked is a mockumentary based in Sonoma County, California. It follows the lives of several winemakers of different backgrounds: the large corporate winery, the established winery with new ownership, the one-man winery, and the marketing duo based in San Francisco. All are trying to make the best wine possible in order to win Sonoma County’s “Golden Harvest Award” and each run into their own specific problems on the road to wine greatness.

The film’s terroir is primarily Sonoma County, although the viewer is able to see different aspects of vineyards in the county, and also exposure to the difficulties in growing there. One of the vineyard managers creates a giant sound system to scare wildlife away with a jaguar call, and openly complains about people from the nearby casino having relations in his vineyard – an absurd scene, but it does highlight some of the issues a winery in California can face. I also wouldn’t be surprised, with California’s history of innovation, if the loud speaker technique hasn’t been attempted at some point.

I liked that the movie focused pretty closely on certain aspects of the winemaking process that may not get attention in other movies. One example was the display of picking the grapes for the harvest. The other wine films I have watched glossed over the physical picking of the grapes. Corked specifically focused on the aspect by introducing the Iowa tourist couple who wanted to experience true wine country. Expecting the Disney World version of wine, they agreed to join the migrant workers for a day to help pick grapes. It was pretty predictable that they left halfway through the day’s picking because they were hot and sweaty, but I liked that the scene did show how difficult the work of harvesting grapes was, and how fast the migrant workers could pick.

Another aspect that was spoofed was the spraying of sulfites on the grapes. In the other movies I have seen, and even the books I have read, the topic of sulfites has not really come up. In this movie, it became front and center when the young hotshot owner and his beau got caught in the fields while the sulfites were being sprayed.

I liked how disparate the different winemakers were from each other, and how the movie was then able to spoof many different aspects of wine culture. The corporate winery probably got the best knocks, between the stiff winery manager who liked cats and the covering up of a body found in one of the wine vats. The marketing duo showed how little someone could know about wine and still attempt to make money off of it – “Shizzle Creek” was an attempt to sell wine to inner city African Americans. The two other wineries showed more of the real-life aspects of working the vineyards in California. One had a redneck in charge of the grapes, most often seen drinking a beer, even in the middle of the wine award ceremony. The other had one man in charge of everything, from growing to winemaking to bottling. I think this character captured the passion that some people have for wine; truly, their entire lives are dedicated to the life cycle of grapes and wine. His wife was seen angrily leaving come harvest time, and he proclaimed at the end of the movie that he might need to actually hire an employee.

Wine knowledge from class helped me to understand some of the jokes. The character of Richard Parsons, the snobby wine critic with strict tasting rules, was pretty funny. But knowing that the character was likely based on real life critic Robert Parker made the satire really hit home. The scene of Parsons almost literally being mauled outside his hotel room so that he would get a taste of a wine shows how much influence the wine critic can have on the success or failure of a winery. Other wine facts from class helped in the scenes with the wine marketers – much of what they said was completely incorrect, but if I didn’t have the wine background I may not have realized the stupidity of their statements. I specifically liked how they focused on the label that would adorn the bottles more than the actual contents of the wine – they didn’t question why a valued winery would give away a selection of grapes for next to nothing.

I would definitely recommend Corked to a wine audience. The movie was just downright funny and it highlighted the best and worst parts of wine culture. Unlike Bottle Shock, the movie was obvious in its spoofing of California wine, and its humor was much closer in line with my own. I think the reason I liked Corked so much is that most of the hilarity didn’t seem too far off from the reality of Sonoma County wineries.

Film Review - Bottle Shock

Bottle Shock is a movie based loosely on George Taber’s book The Judgement of Paris. It follows the travails of the California winery Chateau Montelena and the Barrett family as they attempt to make a great wine. It also follows Steven Spurrier, played by Alan Rickman, as he attempts to find California wine worthy of his blind tasting to compare French and American wines.

I was initially excited to learn that this movie was based off of a book that I had previously read for this class (and reviewed on this blog). Unfortunately, that excitement turned to horror as I quickly realized that the movie was pretty much only based on the same topic, and barely related to the book. The exposition of the film was awful, as I kept having to explain to my friend who had not read the book who everyone was and what exactly was going on. This was difficult when I couldn’t figure out who people were, such as Gustavo, the winemaker, when the book focused a man named Mike Grgich as the head winemaker at Montelena.

The movie was largely set in Napa Valley in California, and was also filmed on-site in the county, so I believe that aspect of the film is true to form. I wasn’t alive in the mid-70s but I can also assume the free-spirited attitudes and clothing were correct for that part of the country at that time. I did think that the portrayal of the California winemakers as largely “hick” farmers was interesting, as I did not get that interpretation from the book. However, I can believe it, as why should the stereotype of a farmer vary from one coast to the next?

The most interesting wine factoid in the movie came from the mysterious brown coloration of the wine in Chateau Montelena’s bottles. Apparently, if you don’t allow any oxygen at all into the winemaking process, the wine will turn brown for a few days – looking like complete oxygenated swill, but still tasting amazing. The color will then dissipate on its own. I particularly liked that Sam and Bo went to the University of California at Davis to find out what happened to their wine, as UC-Davis played a large part in most of the wine experimentation at the time.

The wine discoloration was the source of much drama in the movie, with the affected bottles off to the dump and Jim Barrett forced to take back his old attorney job. Sam and Bo raced to get back to the winery to inform Jim that the wine was perfectly fine, and ended up getting a ride from a cop who Sam had initially flashed. Bo called Jim to tell him about the wine, and Jim proceeded to happily chop off the top of a bottle with a samurai sword. An interesting new party trick, but the absurdity of the scene was a little off-putting. While the movie was marketed as comedy (at least on Netflix), I couldn’t really accept the tone of the movie considering that I knew it was based on reality.

Another apparent wine truth is that one sip of an amazing wine is the best thing to get a girl’s pants off. Sam literally had one taste of Gustavo’s wine and then they immediately got into bed. I wish I was using hyperbole here. The character of Sam also seemed a little strange from a wine perspective – for an intern, she certainly seemed to have close to no knowledge about wine, having obvious details about vineyards explained to her. While I understand the wineries were not making the big bucks, I still would think they could find a slightly better candidate for the job.

Having a previous wine background helped to understand many of the wine terms that were thrown about in the movie – like the exposition, a lot of explanation was lacking. For example, I was able to completely understand what they meant by an “oaky-buttery” Chardonnay and why that is special. I also reveled at knowing that the tool they used to get wine out of the barrel for Steven Spurrier was known as a “wine thief”.

Beyond just the presence of the vineyards and the extremely small details of the movie, there didn’t seem to be a lot of focus on the wine itself. Upon tasting Chateau Montelena’s wine, all of the characters knew it was amazing, but did not reveal what it tasted like or what specifically went in to making it so great. Most of the focus seemed to be on the characters themselves, which was a shame as they came off as a bit one-dimensional.

I would probably recommend this movie to a wine audience that has a particular crush on Alan Rickman. He was by far my favorite part of the movie and almost worth suffering through the rest of the manufactured drama. If you are interested in wine facts and learning about wine, I would suggest skipping the movie and instead reading the book. If you want to watch something that’s funny, wine related, and you have nothing better to do for an hour and a half, then I would recommend this movie.

Film Review - Blood Into Wine

Blood Into Wine is a documentary focusing on Maynard James Keenan, the lead singer of Tool and other bands, and his attempts to create a winery in Arizona. The film follows the life cycle of his first wine made with grapes from his vineyard – from planting to harvest to bottling. The documentary also focuses in on Keenan himself and his motivations for switching from the world of rock to the world of grapes.

From a wine perspective, much of the film focuses around the concept of terroir, or the thought that the ground you grow grapes in gives a character to the grapes that is unique to that specific area. Obviously Arizona is not a place that really anyone would think of when they think of a wine producing area. However, the film addresses this issue by explaining that grapes don’t need a whole lot of water and actually use less water than other crops that would be grown in the area, thereby remaining on the good side of the water control board. Keenan himself is seen explaining to a group of people at a tasting that the northern part of Arizona where the winery is located actually has to worry more about cold than the extended heat. Keenan and others are also seen commenting on how the soil itself reminds them of certain areas of France where vineyards are planted. Despite the similarities to wine growing areas, many of the difficulties of growing grapes are highlighted, including dealing with wild animals.

The documentary also highlights the process of creating the wine and shows certain mechanical processes like de-stemming the grapes and the fermentation of the grape must. This was useful to me, as I had only seen the pictures of these processes in class, or read about them in a wine book, so it was nice to finally have a visual of how the process actually happens. I definitely didn’t realize the sheer numbers of grapes that had to be processed for even a limited batch of wine.

I also liked that the film didn’t just focus on Keenan, and it also gave time to Eric Glomski, Keenan’s winemaker. As mentioned in class, wine is often a partnership between those growing the grapes, those making the wines, and those selling the wines. I appreciated Glomski’s point of view on the wine and the winery, as he had experience that Keenan did not, and also came across as far more personable.

A part of the documentary that I found to be curious was the marketing aspect of Keenan’s winery. I am not very familiar with how most winemakers market their craft, but I’m fairly sure I’ve never heard of one give multiple interviews on rock radio. I thought the concept of the wine bottle signing was interesting, but it seemed as though most of the people at the signing were interested in Keenan because of his musical career versus his new winemaking career. The scenes of fans made it seem like Keenan’s winery was capitalizing on his previous fame to sell a wine that may or may not actually be worth it. Of course, this is no different than a celebrity selling their own brand of perfume, but I thought the depiction of the cross-over between wine and rock was interesting.

There were multiple parts of the film that I didn’t appreciate. While not directly wine-related, the documentary had an underlying sense of bizarre humor that I thought really took away from the presentation of information in the film. In between scenes of wine making and crop growing, the movie would cut to a bizarre “talk show” where two unfunny people would bash wine and Keenan. The makers of the documentary also seemed to relish interviewing the strangest expert personalities they could find. Between the odd Hawaiian shirt-wearing wine taster and the 1860s stereotypical cowboy Arizona history expert, the film began to seem like a mockumentary despite its serious topic.

Speaking of the Hawaiian shirt wine-taster (I do not remember his name, unfortunately, only his attire), the most frustrating part of the film was when they had him do a blind tasting of two Arizona wines, a California wine, and a California/Arizona blend. The taster was extremely critical of one of the wines, but warmed up to the wines following it. I could not recall them actually saying which wine was which and it seemed like a loose end in the story.  I was left intensely curious to know if the Arizona wine was good or bad. Another peeve was when the taster spit out his wine into the glass – they really didn’t have the budget for a bucket? Obviously from all of the Gary V videos we watch for class, we know that it is customary for wine critics to not actually swallow the wine.

Overall I would probably not recommend Blood Into Wine to the normal person interested in wine. While the concept of growing grapes in Arizona is interesting, the strange humor of the documentary is enough to overshadow the point of the film. The terroir of Arizona was intriguing, but there were not enough exciting wine facts to, I think, keep the attention of someone who already knows a little about the process of winemaking. Perhaps if you revere Maynard James Keenan as an idol then you would think differently, but to those who don’t, it was an uninspiring film.