Stop Wining About Grape Expectations

Scotland on Sunday ^ | March 27, 2005 | Kirsty Milne

[quidnunc]

Californians are renowned for a character as mellow as their climate, so it is not often that they get annoyed. But the happy state is turning against Mondovino, a cinematic portrait of the struggle between heroic French wine-growers and crass American giants. While the documentary’s west coast premiere does not take place until next month, the Los Angeles Times has already denounced it as "simplistic, reductionist, heavy-handed and unfair".

Made by an American director, Mondovino satisfies every European prejudice. It tells a story of New World colonialism, in which US wine companies such as Mondavi, an expansionist family firm from the Napa Valley, invade France and Italy in search of profit and plunder. Idiosyncratic French vineyard owners wax lyrical about grapes and soil, while crass Californians show off their swimming pools and boast about their art acquisitions. Poetry and history trump vulgarity and conspicuous consumption.

It is easy to see why Americans resent the film, and why it is a hit in France. The viewer is moved to cheer when a small town in the Languedoc sees off the Mondavis, and to groan when more pliant business people — the Rothschilds in Bordeaux and the Frescobaldis in Tuscany — opt to collaborate with the outsiders.

These wine wars are all too reminiscent of other transatlantic tensions. But the political undertones are less interesting than the cultural ones. The theme which unifies the film is the question of taste: where it comes from, how it spreads — and why Americans get the blame.

-snip-

[cinnathepoet]

Anything in this film about wine critics love of the "cat pee" flavor? Wine critics love cat pee, but hate wet dog. We explain why.

[spinestein]

[Idiosyncratic French vineyard owners wax lyrical about grapes and soil, while crass Californians show off their swimming pools and boast about their art acquisitions. Poetry and history trump vulgarity and conspicuous consumption.]


People who make their own wine can only shake their heads at such snobbery.

[Sarah]

Snobbery of the Americans or the French?

[LibertarianInExile]

Here's the line I agree most with:

"Strip away the geopolitics and there is a correspondence with the fashion industry..."

Nothing wrong with drinking wine if you like that.

My preferences will continue to skew towards bourbon and other quality, non-fashion-esque, beverages, thanks.

[Clemenza]

The Frogs are still sore about the fact that Stag's Leap whipped their a-sses as far back as '78 and that we will surpass them in wine production (and sales) within a decade, to say nothing of the fact that they can't seem to move their overpriced grape juice off supermarket/wine shop shelves in this country anymore.

[spinestein]

[Snobbery of the Americans or the French?]


There is a whole culture that sometimes (but not always) goes with the enjoyment of fine wine that is illustrated by this particular statement from the story: [Idiosyncratic French vineyard owners wax lyrical about grapes and soil, while crass Californians show off their swimming pools and boast about their art acquisitions. Poetry and history trump vulgarity and conspicuous consumption.]

Both France and America (and everywhere else) have their fair share of wine snobs and I have to shake my head when I listen to them "wax lyrical" and "boast about their art".

As a lover of good wine, mead, beer, and other well made alcoholic beverages myself, I enjoy listening to fellow enthusiasts compare the subtle tastes and the virtues of the various offerings as well as discuss the craftsmanship involved, and so forth.

But in my experience, it is only the wine connoisseurs (a few of them anyway, but not the ones I prefer to drink with) who go overboard.

[Route101]

Just give me a pint of ale.......save your wine for fine dining....

[GVnana]

Robert Parker has taken heat for years because people resent his very broad and financially important influence. To my tastes, he is still -- head and shoulders -- the most precise and fair wine analyst out there.

The description you read from Parker is exactly what you drink from the bottle.

[mabelkitty]

How ironic.
The West Coast elites are being treated much the same dismissive way they treat the rest of the US.
I see they don't like it much. Too bad.
Nobody ever did a story on how we don't like being treated with scorn in the flyover states.

[Gabz]

Talk about sour grapes............

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

The viewer is moved to cheer when a small town in the Languedoc sees off the Mondavis, and to groan when more pliant business people — the Rothschilds in Bordeaux and the Frescobaldis in Tuscany — opt to collaborate with the outsiders

Well personally I don't see where the Rothschilds would own the french diddly-squat.

And the french are fine ones to accuse someone else of "collaboration"