Weekend...

[lsur]

Saturday, really lazy till the evening then saw 'Mondovino' at the Arts Picturehouse. This is a documentary about the globalisation of wine, how multinational companies are influencing the taste at the expense of smaller, traditional producers. A bit esoteric (I'm not a wine critic myself) but interesting idea and an insight into the monied world

Comments

Wine esoterica

[ninshubur]

Being more than a little bit of a wine geek the development of mass produced standardized "world-wines" is a thing that saddens me immensely. While it does make wine a less fickle and more consistent "product", it turns one of the last areas where the combination of natural conditions and the art of gifted people leads to a myriad of exciting discoveries into yet another cold, calculated optimization exercise targeted at markets, not people, striving for repeatability not uniqueness and forcing flashiness and instant appeal instead of depth and elegance

Re: Wine esoterica

[lsur]

Robert Parker. He's in the film. Have you seen it? If not you'll find it deals with just the issues you described.

Re: Wine esoterica

[ninshubur]

I haven't seen the film, but yes, that's the bloke. He has a "special" place in my heart for being at least partially responsible for the big Bordeaux price hike in the mid nineties. Prices for his favorites tripled and quadrupled (first through speculation, then through the producers understandably raising the prices themselves), other often more worthwhile Chateaux followed suit (hey, we're as good as them next chateau, so we charge the same amount) and quite a few of the Chateaux where he didn't like the style as much made some IMHO rather unfortunate changes or changed hands. It also led to the concept of the "flying" winemaker, where a winemaker who had a knack for doing Parker-style wines suddenly started to consult dozens of Chateaux. Particulary notorious in this regard is Monsieur Rolland, where it got so far that it got rather hard to find a major wine from Pomerol (small but classy Bdx sub-region) where he didn't lend a hand in making it.
Incidentally though, a lot of the wines (<90 point wines and to a lesser extent even

Re: Wine esoterica

[lsur]

Yes, Monsieur Rolland is featured too. This is all a new story for me, I saw it on spec, but it's intruiging. Wine is so much to do with the earth and the climate. The Californian's introduced oak casks which change the flavour.

[giggly_teapot]

Yeap I do live with a wine geek.
But it does come in handy when we go booze shopping.

[lsur]

I bet it's impossible to turn up with any old bottle of plonk. Do see the film if it's in your area.