Archive for the 'Arts & Entertainment' Category

The holidays are undoubtedly a special time of year. What other time do you spend thinking about the cherished people in your life, thoughtfully planning out the best presents to get them, until you get so frustrated and/or annoyed that people seemingly already have everything and conclude there’s nothing you can give that they don’t already have? So you settle into familiarity with another bottle of that fabulous wine they love, or the newest, most innovative corkscrew to add to the collection, or some more fabulous stemware to fill the bar shelves. Joy to the world, indeed.
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Halloween is upon us, and autumn, my favorite time of the year, inspires thoughts of moody evenings spent reading melancholic greats like Poe, Shelley, Lovecraft. Dark storytellers with an eye for beauty, many of these poets and novelists were also fans of fine wine and spirits—of course in some cases, to dramatic ends.

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Edgar Allan Poe. The 40th anniversary of Woodstock. What do they have in common? Nothing, except that I’m currently researching Poe while also seeing countless articles and documentaries about the mud-drenched rock festival. A deeply spiritual, if cockeyed, connection occurred to me:

One of the last works Poe ever wrote was a book called Eureka, in which he attempted to describe his vision of the creation story, the structure of the universe….and to justify transcendence through, ahem, altered states. You know: achieving an overwhelming, authentic, mystical experience of communion with the infinite, feeling at one with the universe, through artificial means. Poe was a lifelong alcoholic, and may have dabbled in other substances, such as laudanum, a powerful painkiller and tranquilizer in common use in the 19th century. Woodstock…well, among the many things it represents in the popular imagination is spiritual communion, transcendence through altered states, that whole 60s vibe.

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I recently had the immense pleasure of attending the first official Atlantic City Food and Wine Festival, held from July 30th to August 2nd in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The event, which originally debuted in 2007 as Toast to the Coast, was revamped and relaunched this year by partnering with TD Bank and Susan G. Komen for the Cure. With more events, tastings and celebrity chef meet and greets, it was easy to follow the event’s slogan to “Uncork your Passion”.

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I have a playlist on my iPod devoted to music I think I like but I’m not completely sure; I’ll need a few more listens before I decide to keep the songs or jettison them. Some of my favorite songs and movies are those that I wasn’t completely sure of the first time I heard or saw them. That was true of books, too, back when I had the patience to read a couple hundred pages of something that was mystifying or irritating, just because I had a feeling that I held greatness in my hand, if I could only persist.

That’s the wonder and glory of the arts: sometimes the works we resist, those that are most difficult and alien, will move us most deeply and stay with us long after, the plays of Shakespeare being the most obvious example.

That’s true of wine, too.

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Let’s say you’re a barfly. You’ve been drinking nonstop for ten years. Tonight, once again, you’re totally blotto. Even given your damaged judgment, bleariness and idiocy, would you accept a bar bet with a complete stranger that he can blind-identify three wines in a row? No. Probably a scam, right? And if you were a bartender in a small-town saloon, would you scam your regular customers? No. Career suicide. You, dear reader, are a smarter barfly and savvier bartender than the ones depicted in Bottleshock.

Bottleshock, which opens August 6th, is the first of two movies, I understand, about the 1976 Paris tasting, when California wines unexpectedly bested French wines in a blind tasting by leading critics, launching the Golden State’s wines onto the world stage. This one stars Alan Rickman as Steven Spurrier, the writer and merchant who set up the tasting. Chris Pyne (who is starring at Captain Kirk in the upcoming Star Trek prequel) is Bo Barrett, Bill Pullman is Jim Barrett. It’s got some gorgeous photography (barrel rooms, wine shops, vineyards – who can resist?), a gorgeous cast (Eliza Dushku – resistance is futile) and some of the details feel right. But the moviemakers have poured a Tinseltown glaze of contrivance and cuteness over the production, and it sinks.

As a movie fan, I was put off by the faux hostility between father and son and the predictable arc of the n’er-do-well assuming responsibility; I was irritated by the uberglib, saccharine yapping between the young winemakers. As a wine lover, I was dumbfounded by the third act suspense sequence involving turned Chardonnay bottles, as well as the overall depiction of the Barretts. I described some of this to a prominent California winemaker who was around at the time of the depicted events and he started growling like an enraged tiger.

Even the excellent Alan Rickman is defeated by some of the dialogue he’s given. When a character laments the blow that French wine has taken in the world’s eyes from the tasting, and moans that c’est fini, it is the end, Rickman’s Spurrier replies, and I paraphrase: “This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning. Australia [will enter the wine world.] Chile. South Africa…” Hollywood.

Have you been offended by the lack of authenticity in recent wine or culinary movies? What are some underrated food-movie gems?