May 23rd, 2026 marked the 50th Anniversary of “The Judgment of Paris”, an event that changed the world of fine wine forever.

Throughout the 20th century, and seemingly even before, wine had been staunchly centered in Europe, and not just Europe but specifically France. Burgundy. Bordeaux. Cote du Rhone. Chablis. Sancerre. Provence. Sauternes. These are words - places - that to drinkers all over the world meant and still mean that the wine in the bottle is some of the finest they can find. It was on a level that almost no others could match.

Behind this thinking was the all important concept of Old World superiority which was and is rooted in the notion that fine wine required centuries of heritage and terroir specific to the “noble grape” of Europe. And these “noble grapes” were, originally, all French.

Wines of California and other “New World” wine growing regions were often scoffed at, dismissed as primitive and a poor man’s version of French wine. Even if - maybe especially if - they were growing and making wine with noble grapes meant for France’s terroir.

Yet by the 1970’s, word of mouth was getting around that the wines coming out of California and specifically Napa Valley were pretty g.d. good. British wine shop owner and educator Steven Spurrier was a convert. He thought the world needed to understand how good wines from outside of France and - god forbid - all of Europe had become. So he convinced a panel of all French judges to undergo a “blind tasting” - though he did spring the “blind” part on them at the 11th hour - of French vs. Californian wines. The best of both would be tasted side by side.

Shockingly, two California wines won the two top spots: Chateau Montelena’s Chardonnay, and Stag Leap’s Cabernet Sauvignon, beating out the Chard and Cab hailing from the finest wineries in Burgundy and Bordeaux, respectively. The French judges were so appalled, some tried to destroy their score cards before the news could get out of what they had done. But the news did get out.

What followed was an awakening for California wine - the rise of Napa and Sonoma Valley, and the sudden obsession with all things Chardonnay and Cabernet.

More than that, though, it also showed that other parts of the world could compete: France was no longer the unquestioned king of wine countries. With time, possibly any country, any terroir, could develop into a wine producing territory of equal quality. With or without “noble grapes”. Sometimes even with indigenous grapes that weren’t even of the same species as the noble grapes! It opened up the world, to the world.

That all said, many even in America - especially in America! - have argued that we need to stop talking about the Judgment of Paris. That we can’t keep clinging to this one story, this one event, to proclaim why people should be drinking Californian and American wines.

I am not exactly one of those people. It’s true that we can’t lean on it like a crutch. But it’s also true that the lesson it gave to the world needs to be relearned over and over again. The chokehold of Old World vs. New World is still pernicious. Even within the New or Old World themselves, the lesson needs to be learned as we debate whether there are any good American wines outside of, say, California, Oregon, and Washington; in the Old World, we’re still rediscovering wines and nearly-extinct indigenous grapes from Armenia, Greece, Slovenia, Slovakia, Portugal, and more. Ukrainian wine is now coming into its own!

“But it can’t be that good,” the world exclaims. And the lesson needs to be relearned, again and again.

The full story of American wine’s history is too lengthy to include here in full, but the broad strokes are: American wine in the 1800’s won awards at multiple international competitions before finally clean-sweeping the 1889 World Fair - in PARIS - taking home 34 of 36 possible awards. It was, in all the ways that matter, The Judgement of Paris before The Judgment of Paris.

In the movie BOTTLE SHOCK, Alan Rickman’s Steven Spurrier quips “I don’t foresee the imminent cultivation of the Chicago vine.” Yet it was wine from Chicago! (Well, just outside Chicago.) And Los Angeles; from Livermore Valley in California; even wine from Missouri!!! That all took home awards throughout the 1800’s.

The French were so incensed then, that they changed the rules to invalidate Californian wines in the proceeding Word Fair competitions after 1889. And once we entered the early 1900’s, Prohibition essentially wiped out the American wine industry, which did not fully recover until the 1960’s - 1970’s, when the Judgment of Paris took place. And thanks to Prohibition resetting American culture the way it did, we largely forgot our history of award-winning, internationally competitive wines that existed nearly 150 years ago.

But for now, it’s time to dig into this movie BOTTLE SHOCK from 2008, starring Alan Rickan, Bill Pullman, Chris Pine, Chris Pine’s wig, Freddy Rodriguez, and Rachel Taylor. And pair some, perhaps, very Californian wines - or perhaps some very new-new world wines? This is a movie all about the new overtaking the old. So…Happy 50th Anniversary Judgment of Paris. As current Californians, we salute you.

Did You Know They Made BOTTLE SHOCK: THE MUSICAL?!? Well, They Did.

This sampling suggests it was…about as good as the movie. Make of that what you will.

THE WINES

DAVE’S PAIRING

I first saw Bottle Shock in the early 2010’s, before I’d fallen into wine. I knew nothing about the real life Judgment of Paris, I simply wanted to see an Alan Rickman / Bill Pullman film. I recall that I liked it quite a bit - similar to how you can be in the mood for a perfectly by-the-numbers Rom Com, this indie drama checked all the boxes for me that day. Did I learn a lot about wine and take to heart anything about the “Judgment of Paris” event? Nein. I watched the movie as though it were pure fiction, though I think I did clock, in passing, that it was “based on a true story”.

Revisiting it now, and even putting aside all my wine knowledge that I’ve accumulated since, the movie does not hold up well. Every actor is dialed to 11 at all times. The dialogue is cliche-riddled and the pacing somehow both too quick and plodding at the same time. We spend an inordinate amount of time in California on bullshit love triangles and made-up father/son meltdowns that never add up to much. The characters never unfold into a second or third dimension - they remain tightly one-note throughout. Alan Rickman being perfectly Alan Rickman can only assist so much.

So…I needed a wine that could be the antithesis of the film, a counter-pairing of complexity and delightfulness. Leaning into the real-life event of the Judgment of Paris, I considered a wine from the “New World”, a wine that the event opened up to the public going forward. At first I didn’t think I’d stick to California, but then I considered…what grapes did I think should have become the red and white grapes of California instead of Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon?

I discuss this more at length in the podcast episode, but I soon settled on my pick for the red grape, a parent of Cab Sauv, and a grape that grows with much more elegance and consistent complexity in the state of Cali-for-nai-ay - Cabernet Franc.

Back in the 1970’s, it’s possible that Cab Franc struggled to get ripe enough in Cali, just like it did in Bordeaux. But today, Cab Franc seems far and away the superior fine wine grape. Now adopted by Chile and Argentina as well, it delivers the best of both “Worlds” - the richness of the New World with the complexity, the earth and spice and balancing astringency of the Old World.

Taking the thought even further, I considered how poorly the film was written, and wondered: what if the winemaker was a great writer, too?

Enter from stage left: . The man who harbors a deep, borderline monogamous love with Cabernet Franc, and has worked hard to make it the future red grape of the Livermore Valley in California.

His Steven Kent Winery produces a number of Cab Franc bottles, but one of the more fascinating offerings is his Elements 4-Pack, with a bottle each of Cab Franc aged in STEEL, ROCK (concrete), and WOOD (oak), and a fourth ELEMENTS bottle that’s a blend of all three!

It’s a perfect way to experience the wide range of expressions that Cab Franc can give even within a single vintage. By aiming to make a Loire-style French Cab Franc but in the New World terroir of California, the wines are the best of both worlds. You get generous fruit (to match the movie) but also the missing complexity and depth, the preserved acidity for much needed lift. And by sampling all 4 while watching the movie, you’ll be kept enrapt by the wine and you won’t miss anything from the movie. Trust me: you could fall asleep for 10 minutes and not miss anything critical in the movie.

Buy ELEMENTS 4-Pack

And don’t forget the “great writer” part: Steven is one of the best wordsmiths I’ve yet encountered in the world of wine. And that isn’t shade on any other wiine writer! It’s a high bar! But Steven is ouright novelistic in his ability to write a god damned sentence, my friends.

Over a year ago (because what is time?) Steven send me his book Lineage: Life and Love and Six Generations in California Wine. It’s essentially a Journal, looking back on his history and his present, waxing philosoophical about both, with thoughts toward the future. It’s deeply personal. Not remotely thrilling. It should bore me to tears, but the writing is so beautiful it sucks me right in.

Buy LINEAGE Book

DALLAS’ PAIRING

Alan Rickman’s Steve Spurrier quips that in the coming years he suspects they will see chardonnays from all around the world. And right he was. The new world seemed to open up after this moment.

And as we mentioned in the episode, the film left me wanting to rewrite the hell out of it in order to find something more thrilling, I suppose. The Judgement of Paris stands as a marquis event in the history of wine and calls out for a grander take. It’s a summit of sorts, where old meets new. Where new proves its worth and old is reminded of its limitations.

So for my pairing, I wanted to go with something that combined the cache of the old world with the entrepreneurial spirit of the new world.

And the duo that willed this wine into existence represent both traditions in their work.

My pick is from Domaine Terlato & Chapoutier which is a collaboration between legendary French Australia wine grower, Michel Chapoutier and wine industry icon, Italian-American Anthony Terlato.

The 2019 TERLATO & CHAPOUTIER SHIRAZ

The Chapoutier family have been working in the Rhône Valley since 1808. Their ancestor, Polydor Chapoutier, was the first to buy vines there, shifting from being a simple grape grower to making and trading his own wine. And now that pioneering spirit is visible seven generations later with Michel Chapoutier.

Anthony “Tony” Terlato, chairman/founder of Terlato Wine Group who indelibly influenced the American wine industry and culture for over 60 years with his work with Pacific Wine Company, and Rutherford Hill.

According to the literature the soil is composed of schists, lauzes (rocks made of limestone and quartz).while their harvest is performed at maturity- usually 2 weeks later than neighbouring plots, avoiding over-maturation.

100% destemmed grapes are fermented in concrete tanks with maceration lasting from 4 to 6 weeks followed by a gentle extraction and a long maceration on skins to ensure elegant and fine tannins.

100% of the wine is aged for 18 months in French oak barrels.

It is an intense and deep ruby colour with hints of violet with black fruits, violet and liquorice on the nose. And a spicy, slightly acidic palate with wild strawberries.

And in an uncanny way I give homage to the old world in the grape and in the background of the two people- Terlato of Italian heritage rooted in America and Chapoutier who’s of french heritage rooted in Australia.

Listen Elsewhere

And make sure you listen to our VINTERVIEW with special guest, director Chris McGilvray and learn all about the feature wine documentary he directed, EDEN (2024) about the Mount Eden Winery and Vineyard, considered to have the lonbgest lineage of Pinot Nooir and Chardonnay in all of North America! It was our favorite wine doc ofthe past many years. The human story of the family behind the winery is heart breaking:

The Western As We Knew It

The Western was a cheap pulp genre in Hollywood until the 1930’s, when John Ford’s Stagecoach starring John Wayne became the best selling movie of the year. What followed was an era dubbed “The Golden Age” for the genre, spannning from 1940 - 1960, as Westerns attracted some of Hollywood’s biggest directors and stars.

By the mid-60’s, television Westerns began to supercede the poularity of the films, and Hollywood studios wound down how many of the films they made. But outside of Hollywood, a brand new kind of Western was about to take the world by storm: the Spaghetti Western.

Kickstarted by Sergio Leone’s The Man With No Name trilogy starring Clint Eastwood, over 600 Spaghetti Westerns were filmed throughout Europe between 1964 and 1978, with over 500 of those filmed in Italy alone.

Leone might have sparked this sub-genre, but after his Eastwood trilogy, he had little interest in doing any more. But this was when Hollywood came calling with an offer of a well-financed, no-strings-attached, Henry Fonda-starring Western and the offer was seductive enough for Leone to return to the genre. But this time, he invented yet another subgenre: the art house revisionist Western.

Revisionist Westerns abounded in its wake: Corbucci’s THE GREAT SILENCE, Sam Pekinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH in 1969, Robert Altman’s MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER in 1971, JEREMIAH JOHNSON in 1972.

The real fork in the tex-mex grilled steak that was the Hollywood Western seems to be 1974’s send-up of the entire gnere, BLAZING SADDLES by Mel Brooks. A box office sensation upon its release (surprisingly, the very first true-blue hit to Brooks’ name) such an absolute parody seemed to have allowed audiences to put the gerne to bed in terms of taking it too seriously. And whatever trace good will might have remained has firmly wiped out by 1980’s overly indulgent HEAVEN’S GATE, the film that also bears the greatest repsonsibility for ending the “auteaur era” of the 1970’s in America.

What followed was the first real dry spell for the Western as a popular genre, which lasted from roughly 1975 through to the late 1980’s. Which was when a modern period began, one in which ALL the many Western sub-genres could co-exist next to each other.

The pulp silliness of YOUNG GUNS and BACK TO THE FUTURE III sat alongside the straight drama of DANCES WITH WOLVES which sat next to the revisionist flavor of UNFORGIVEABLE which sat next to the Golden Age formula of TOMBSTONE which sat next to the horror-Westerns like NEAR DARK and SUNDOWN. And the genere has never left us since.

But let’s talk about the beginning of the final unique “era” of the Western film. The 3-hour epic work of cinema that launched Charles Bronson’s career at the age of 47 and made audiences see the baby blues of Henry Fonda in a whole new light.

Let’s talk ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, and whatt our perfect wines are to pair with it.

The Wines

Listen to the episode to learn the stories behind the wines and our reasoning for each pairing:

Borgo Savaian “Aransat” Orange Wine, Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Italy

Pax Syrah, Sonoma Hillsides 2023

Alegre Valganon Rioja Blanco 2024

We chat with Chris about his narrative short filmmaking, how he quickly realized this was never going to lead to the kind of breakthrough previous generations enjoyed, pivoted to branded content and became a champion of pushing that type of work into more organic and authentic expressions, and then segued from that into his first feature length documentary about the Mount Eden Winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains, considered to have the longest lineage of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in all of North America.

We thought this Vinterview would run 20-30 minutes. We had the whole thing Q&A’d scripted out and it was only 5 Q’s! But the conversation evolved organically and we talked at length about the themes of the documentary, themes you rarely see in a Wine doc yet pertain to nearly every aspect of the wine industry.

Chris’ story is the first half, roughly, then we chat about the documentary starting at the 28.5 minute mark.

The film opens at twilight, with an older man, Jeffrey, smoking a cigar next to a campfire as the light fades in the distance. We then see his face. He looks lost, bewildered. Contemplative but also adrift.

We cut to beautiful vistas of the vineyard at dawn. A younger man pruning in the morning air. Then making an espresso. This is the son, Reid, and he is uncertain how much he wishes to embrace the vineyard and the winery. It did not make for the happiest childhood, so high up on a mountain, away from friends and greater civilization.

There is an older daughter as well, Sophie, who is more enamored with the work ethic of her parents. Her father was the 7th winemaker in a 9 year period, and the first after its founder to make the vineyard and winery succeed, a 40+ years and counting.

These are the kinds of stories and people-of-the-land myths we celebrate in the fine wine world. And for the first many months of filming, so did director Chris McGilvray. But he soon worked through the footage and realized he had a glorified travelogue. The parents were always acting as brand ambassadors, rarely showing anything under the veneer of the winemaker myth.

Then Reid came home. A much more internal, contemplative chharacter than the others. He had wanted to forge his own path in life, but suffering setbacks, returned to the family business. Not entirely happily. The film’s first real sit down interview with him does something documentaries rarely do: it shows him struggling for words, thinking, starting to speak, stopping, thinking some more. This sets the tone for the doc going forward.

We follow the famiily struggling with legacy: will the children take over? Do they truly want to? Retirement is, eventually, a necessity, but do both parents want to retire? Or has one become the thing that he does?

The film is bookended with Ellie stating this:

In the opening, it’s a curious moment. By the end, it’s repeated in context to heightened effect.

EDEN is a film that is equal parts a celebration of the Patterson family’s incredible achievement with the Mount Eden Winery. But it is equally a tale of heartbreak and familial reckoning, as the obsession and single-mindedness required, the loss of identity outside of one’s work, proves a rupturing force.

The documentary was filmed over the course of 7 years, the story slowly taking shape as the family drama evolved. But it is now my favorite wine documentary I’ve yet seen. It’s about the wine, but it’s much more about the family sacrifice involved. And whether this shows wine in a good light, bad light, or something in-between will be up to the viewer.

Join us in a couple days as Chris joins us for a proper Vintertainment episode to talk about one of his favorite films of all time:

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST - we’ll see you then!

You can watch Chris’ narrative short films:

The Silence

Damage

Out of Nowhere

Terroir

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Released in 2001 in a post-Y2K, pre-social media environment, Pulse was Kiyoski Kurosawa’s (Cure, Before We Vanish) poetical musing in regards to what this thing called the internet might do to society.

In Pulse, we enter a world where people are slipping away thanks to the pull of technology, fading into ghosts and leaving the physical world behind them. When transitioning into a ghost, they “stain” the spot they were last physically present, creating a “forbidden room” which can be sealed off. But if any still-living person enters such a room, the ghost will pull them into their depression, their despondancy, until that person also fades into a stain-ghost.

In many cases, a person turns into a smoky stain-ghost while physically with another person. The other person might be making small talk, cheerfully proclaiming how they’ll stay together and not be lonely while only half-paying attention to the social interaction.

Meaning: physical presense alone isn’t enough. Interactions and interventions can’t alter the trajectory. Loneliness can be - and often is - other people as well.

Life rumbles on. Many strive to save their friends and family while simply being too busy and distracted to accomplish anything of note. And the ghosts continue to spread. Tokyo is soon an empty shell of taped up “forbidden rooms”, and we realize we are witnessing an apocalypse. The old world that we took for granted is literally dead and gone.

Pulse has zero jump scares. Zero blood. Nothing happens quickly, and the most memorable scene of the movie - the scene, as most refer to it - is literally the slowest moving of the entire film. But it is utterly unnerving and, in my estimation, the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.

If you’ve never seen Pulse - and make sure to watch the original Japanese movie and not the American remake, which largely mistranslates the concept - sit down on a nice quiet evening. Get into a contemplative, brooding mood. Then pour yourself one of the two wines below, and sink your teeth into both.

Just not so deep you fade into a stain on the couch.

THE WINES

DAVE: Pulse is a movie about human loneliess. It’s dark, shadowy, literally smoky as people fade into smoke-like stains. So I wanted a wine from a lonely place: high up on a mountain. And a wine that I conisdered an “alone” wine, a wine I drink mostly by myself. One that, even when amongst other people, I often find myself nursing solo.

Loma Prieta is a winery founded in the Santa Cruz Mountains, by Paul Kemp (a personal injury lawyer) and his wife Amy Wiler Kemp (an attorney.) The couple fantasized about Mountain Living. They originally planted Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon, but these struggled in the high altitude site facing the cool breezes from the Pacific Ocean. So they then grafted the vineyard to Pinot Noir, after which it began producing award-winning, Gold Medal wines, under the expert guidance of viticulture consultant Prudy Foxx, who is still involved with the vineyard today.

But then came a revelation. Paul discovered another grape. Related to Pinot Noir, that changed everything. A much bolder, darker, smokier grape...

Paul discovered Pinotage, a rare cross between Pinot Noir and a red Rhone grape called Hermitage (aka Cinsault). While it’s the most widely planted red in South Africa, less than 60 acres exist in all of California. He learned of the variety from his first winemaker, Paul Wofford, who was sourcing Viognier, Roussanne and Chardonnay from the Amorosa vineyard in Lodi, a vineuyard that also grew Pinotage.

Paul was never one to do things cautiously, so once he fell in love with this variety he set out to find every vineyard in the state that grew Pinotage, eventually making four vineyard designates of the grape, including the preeminent version from the estate. Out went the Pinot Noir and in went Pinotage in 2013, where 3.5 acres of the highest altitude Pinotage in North America continue to thrive.

And now Loma Prieta is the largest producer of Pinotage in all of North America!

The label is a story in itself. Paul and Amy were big fans of New Orleans artist, Martin La Borde, whose work they collected on each visit to the Big Easy. They contacted La Borde and had him capture the view of Mt. Loma Prieta as seen from winery site to grace their wines. The yellow, red, and orange lines running beneath the green mountains represent the famous 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The flying wine connoisseur is a recurring character in Martin LaBorde’s work, a little magician named Bodo. (And the winery also produces a “Bodo’s Blend”, 80% Pnotage 20% Petite Sirah.) He’s flying over the mountain with a glass of Pinot Noir in hand, a peace offering to the gods that rumble deep within. Unlike in the movie, so far this has worked for Loma Prieta.

After her husband passed away in 2018, Amy became a “wine widow,” and ran the show pretty much single-handedly until November of this year. With both her sons now in college, it was time to move down from the mountain. Sinco 2020, Loma Prieta is now in the care of Chris Arriaga, a real estate entrepreneur and former US Marshall. He and his daughter, Samantha, both residents of Saratoga, will continue to operate the winery under its existing name, retaining all staff, along with longtime consulting winemaker Michael Sones.

I have a number of Loma Prieto Pinotage wines, because I love the grape so much, even though so few others do. They have an Estate Pinotage, two single-vineyard Pinotages, a “Bodo’s Blend” which is 80% Pinotage 20% Petite Sirah, an entry level Pinotage, and a Sparkling Blanc de Noir pure Pinotage!

I sipped the single vineyard - Amorosa Vineyard 2016 Pinotage. Because it was SMOKY. The Bodo’s Blend is smoother, fruitier, but Amarosa Pinotage displayed the smokey or “burnt rubber” or “campfire” quality that Pinotage is often infamous for, and which paired best with the flavor of the film.

I’m usually the only person craving Pinotage. It’s a deep, dark, brooding wine that I drink alone, but one which makes me happy.

DALLAS: My approach to the pairing is more practical this time. It began with a simple question. If I found myself in the situation in act three of this film and I needed to make my way to the coast for a ship and uncertain safety then which wine would I take?

Because I would certainly need wine. And that wine would need to be 1)nearby 2) plentiful enough 3) easy to steal, pilfer a large quantity of.

And Gamblers Ghost CABERNET SAUVIGNON ticks all those boxes. How you ask?

Well,

1. I live near a Costco, so should the proverbial shit hit the fan then I “could” be one of the first people inside Costco.

2. Fior di Sole is a family-owned and operated winery which owns the Gamblers Ghost label. Their wine portfolio spans more than 3.5 million cases and includes 9 million gallons of storage capacity. Fior di Sole makes more than 1 million cases of wine under brands it owns and an additional 1 million cases for other brands, including retailer specific varieties. And Gamblers Ghost or one of its label mates would likely be well in stock on Costco shelves due to these impressive production numbers.

3. And since, we’re talking about the apocalypse, then it stands to reason that I’d have to help the other marauding lunatics break into said Costco and clear its shelves once word got out that it was the end of civilization as we know it. And while everyone else is busy stealing five pound blocks of Velveeta and fist thick pork chops, I’d be skulking away with a pallet of wine across the parking lot and then into the back of the car.

The 2022 vintage of Gamblers Ghost Cab Sauv received a minimum 92 points on a few lists and certainly gives me a bang for my buck.

The Gambler’s Ghost is 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, and 5% Petit Verdot, making it a Bordeaux Blend.

The grapes came from vineyards in the Lake County AVA (North of Napa) and Sonoma (west of Napa). The North Coast AVA is Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, Lake County, and a couple of small AVAs.

It was aged for 10 months in 60% new French oak barrels.

ABV is 14.5%.

It’s black cherry in color. A berry, spice nose.

And you even get a little licorice in the taste.

And again, this wine could be found at Costco for under 10 dollars. But by the time this episode drops I may have already (clears throat) purchased all the bottles and made my way for the coast line. So, hopefully I’ll see you on the rescue ship. But just know, I won’t be sharing my Gambler’s Ghost.

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This week we are joined by no-budget filmmaker , writer/director of WHAT OTHER COUPLES DO, BEDROOM STORY, and IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S LA and writer of the book Yes You Can: How to Make a Movie for Almost No Money

Courtney Daniels

I love making films independently and encourage others to consider film as their medium for self-expression.

Courtney selected the original VALLEY GIRL from 1983 to bring onto the pod. This was the breakout role for Nicolas Cage as well as director Martha Coolidge, who went on to direct such 80’s gems as REAL GENIUS with Val Kilmer.

VALLEY GIRL was meant to be a basic teen sex comedy loosely inspired by the Frank Zappa/Moon Zappa song of the same name that parodied “Val Speak”, the airheaded teen dialect of the SoCal Valley area. But Coolidge brought a female POV and voice to the work, transforming it into something more sincere, layered, and unique. She discovered Cage when she pointed to his headshot and said “That! We need someone like that! Not a pretty boy!” The producers weren’t convinced Cage was sexy enough to be a romantic lead, but he cranked up the charm and magnetism with a wild and unpredictable performance, essentially finding the style of acting that would go on to define him so that he could secure a role he wouldn’t otherwise have qualified for. (At least not in the producers’ minds.)

Coolidge had to agree to include precisely 4 scenes of bare breasts, and make the film within budget, and the producers left her alone outside of those perameters.

The result is a cult classic that only grows in reputation as new genrations discover it. Listen to our full conversation above!

Wine Trivia Question of the Week

The Wines

HUSCH Late Harvest Gewurtztraminer, Anderson Valley, California

One of Dallas’ most cherished wine memories is traveling to Anderson Valley, and stumbling upon this small winery where almost no one else was present. There were a few tables for seating guests, and the winemaker themselves served him some of the best Gewurtraminer he’s ever had in his life. He bought a case of it on the spot.

Years went by as he sang the praises of this wine and winery (but never shared, the stingy bastard jk he drank it all way too fast to share it the greedy bastard.) By the time he found another bottle at a local shop, it didn’t taste as he remembered it. The memory of how unbelivably good the wine was, was just that…a memory. So fondly recalled that no reality could ever compare.

But the Late Harvest Gewurtztraminer still holds up, or so says Dallas. “Late Harvest” being when they harvest the grapes late, allowing them to over-ripen, develop an abundance of sugar content. This would create an alcohol bomb of a wine if they fermented it all the way to being “dry”, but instead the goal is to halt fermentation at a certain point and leave a significant amount of sugar behind, un-fermented, thus creating a sweet desert wine.

Gewurztraminer is an “aromatic” grape, beatifully floral, peach and tropical fruit-driven, a flavor and aromatic profile that lends itself to desert styles. At 17% residual sugar this is a decadent, sweety of a wine, just like the 80’s teen love aehtetic of the movie, but also layered and more satusfying than you’d expect, just like this movie.

Courtney had been gifted this wine by a friend - and is there any more filmmaker / LA wine than MIRAVAL Provence Rose? The answer is “no”.

Founded by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie while they were still a loving couple - though today owned only by Brad as Jolie sold off her shares in the wak of their divorce - this is a pink, light, crisp, proper Provancal style rose made for sipping on the balmy 99 degree days that mark a typical summer day in the Valley. If Miraval existed in the 80’s, these Valley kids would be illicitly sipping it to prove how classy they were.

Thaaaaat’s right! I chose the wine that could have sprung straight out of the 80’s with it’s stickers, charm braceletes, jargon-coated labels, and names like “OMG!?!” and “Obsessed”.

In the episode I read out loud Gen Z founder Jess Drury’s story of starting Whiny Baby, and I speak it in a Valley Girl voice, or “Val speak”. It’s not a very good Valley Girl voice, but I do my best😜

And it’s actually a pretty fascinating, inspiring story that admittedly is going to challenge most tradiitional wine folks to enjoy her POV or passions that had her start up Whiny Baby from her mom’s living room, and now a couple years later it’s owned by Gallo.

You can read her full story on Substack where she interviewed Jess:

Resilient Wine

Why You Should Pay Attention to Whiny Baby

But, like, literally CRINGE…

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2 years ago · 9 likes · 10 comments · Stevie Stacionis

I ultimately paired the movie with Whiny Baby OBSESSED Red Wine as the color, intensity, and the idea of being obsessed with another person (or wine!) is the most apropos for the romance in Valley Girl.

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(LITERAL) EDIT: Now with the correct, edited video above! I accidentally published this with the raw, unedited video originally. Mea culpa.

Anton Yelchin was only 27 years old when he passed away unexpectedly (due to a freak accident which we cover in the episode, so listen if you’re unaware of the story.) I had known and worked with Anton in the year leading up to the event, so it was always difficult to watch the films released posthumously.

But this year marks the 10th anniversary of his death day, and I decided that was enough time. I’d always been curious about these final films of his, so we decided to choose one for the podcast. Naturally, being a Portuguese wine sales rep + having just visted the city of Porto in Northern Portugal back in March + having just covered our first work of Portuguese cinema with ANIKI-BOBO (1942), the film PORTO (2017) by gab Klinger and starrubg Anton and French actress Lucie Lucas was the no-brainer.

Logline: Porto, taking place in a dreamy, remembered version of the gorgeous Portuguese city, stars Anton Yelchin as Jake, an American abroad who crosses paths with Mati (played by Lucie Lucas), a beautiful Frenchwoman also somewhat stranded and vulnerable to coincidence and romantic pull. A relationship flares up, but it’s one complicated by time itself: the film is shot on film in multiple formats (Super 8, 16 mm, and 35 mm), each one used to embody a span of time in the life of the couple before, during and after their one day rendezvous and ardor.

In the podcast, we cover the making of the film, then break it down into 3 Acts and discuss our thoughts after each Act alongside our wine pairing thoughts and how they evolved as the movie evolved.

With a few detours into the distinction between Love and Obsession:

HIGHLIGHT CLIP - “Love: Purely Subjective or Do We Misuse the Word?”

The Wines

2022 Bojador Vinho de Talha Branco, Alentejo, Portugal

As a crucial scene in the movie takes place at an archeological dig site, I though to thematically pair it with an ultra-traditional style of Portuguese wine that uses the “Talha” (tahl-ya) clay vessel, the shattered remains of which are often found at and associated with acient winemaking sites.

Traditional to the Alentejo in Southern Portugal, a hot and flat area that tens to make riper, “hotter” wines, the Talha method tends to produce lighter, more nuanced expressions of the terroir. Bojador is the side passion project of Pedro Ribeiro, one of the winemakers at Herdade de Rocim, one of the largest wineries in the Alentejo. But Bojaodr is all Pedro’s.

His Talha wines are aged in the ceramic Talhas on the seeds, stems, and skins, punched down 3 times per day for 4 months straight, then bottled. This process lends the wines additional tannin, light “green” vegetal notes, and the ceramic vessel a stoney minerality undergirding it all. The punchdowns over the course of 4 months also gives the wines a slight oxidative note on the backend (as the wine is continually exposed 3x per day). The Tinto (or red) version has this briny black olive tang, and the Branco (or white) has a slight sherry undertone.

PORTO is a challenging movie in terms of content, but it glides easily from scene to scene, jumping time and place without holding your hand but also never belaboring it. It’s an engrossing, frictionless watch in that sense, and so I most recommend the Branco/white version of the Bojador Talha. Complex, challenging, but smooth texture and nuanced vs. intense.

Alternate Way to Approach This Pairing

Drink Live You’re Falling in Love! But in the order the movie presents it: first the pain and the misery, then the love. 1 Glass where you’ve made the wine something less good. Then 1-2 glasses where it’s the ideal.

2010 Jose Maria de Fonseca “Alambre” Moscatel de Setubal, Portugal

Aka Muscat of Alexandria, but everyone in wine has to claim shit as their own so here it’s Moscatel de Setubal. Remeber: wine is only complex because it has to be. 🙄

The style was believed to have been invented by José Maria da Fonseca, the founder of José Maria da Fonseca, the oldest industrial-scale table wine producer in Portugal dating back to 1834. J.M. Fonseca company still holds a quasi-monopoly control over the production of Moscatel de Setúbal today.

Similar to Port, these are fortified, sweet wines that are barrel aged, and can come in both “vintage” bottlings of a single year or NV (non-vintage) mixtures of years. At 5-6 years of age they’ll be fresher and fruitier, while older bottlings will begin to develop notes of raisin, caramel, toffee, etc.

Dallas was initially unsure of what to pair with this film. Should he pair with the mood of the backdrop, setting? The moodiness of the female lead? The quiet insanity of the male lead? Or perhaps something referential that mimics the flashback heavy device used in the film?

In the end, we opted for something sweet, savory, and that would have you drunk enough to ignore the narrative shortcomings after 2 glasses!

And there you have it, PORTO (2017) by Gabe Klinger, starring Anton Yelchin (RIP) and Lucie Lucas. Paired with Bojador Vinho de Talha and Fonseca Moscatel de Setubal. Give the full episode a listen either here on Substack or on your podcast platform of choice.

And we both truly enjoyed watching this movie, even though we had oodles of criticisms for it, the experience was actually almost entirely positive. It’s streaming on Tubi here in the States. See if you can find it for yourself on streaming. And Kino Lorber has it on Blu ray.

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First up: our own (me!) guested on someone else’s podcast - THE FANBASE WEEKLY. Alongside host Bryant Dillon and writer extraordinaire Corinna Bechko (The Space Between, Aliens vs. Vampirella, Avatar: Adapt or Die) we discuss Alex Garland’s debut novel THE BEACH on it’s 30th Anniversary.

I’ve long been a fan of the Peter Boyle movie, but I’d never read the novel! Until now. How does it hold up? How does it compare to the movie? We deep dive into it ALL. It was a truly lovely conversation. You can listen above, or find The Fanbase Weekly on your podcast platform of choice!

(Note there is no wine talk in this guest podcast, alas.)

Wine Cellar Cinema (Los Angeles Microcinema Update!)

Our upcoming LA microcinema has a name! WINE CELLAR CINEMA. We’re working on the logo as I type.

And the space itself is taking shape! We test screened a film by a little over a month ago, and realized we needed some equipment upgrades to really do Wine and Movie events at Curated Wine Shop justice, and so that’s what we’ve been busy doing:

Not final, but playing with our brand aesthetic…

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It was nominated for nine Oscars, but because they’re all a bunch of dirty foreigners it only won for Best International Feature Film. Though by doing so, it became the first Norwegian film to ever win the category.

Joachim Trier and regular co-writer Eskil Vogt hit the scene with Reprise in 2007, a film that took them 5 years to write. They followed with Oslo: August 31st in 2011, the second of what would become Trier’s “Oslo Trilogy”. Then his stab at a film with a Hollywood cast in Louder Than Bombs (2015), a stab at a horror movie with Thelma (2017) and then he concluded the Oslo trilogy with The Worst Person In the World in 2021. The Oslo Trilogy are all set in Oslo and features actor Anders Danielsen Lie in a leading role and tend to revolve around the theme of social exclusion. Trier’s THELMA is also set in Oslo with a similar core theme, but does not have Lie in the cast, and therefore is not considered a part.

Riding high off the conclusion of the Oslo trilogy, Trier found himself with a blank slate for what he tackled next.

When asked about the inspiration for Sentimental Value Trier stated:

Poetically, the house that features in the film, was a house Trier had shot in before.

Trier had scouted dozens of houses before arriving at this one, which he recognized and realized he'd been before. He instantly saw how scenes from the script would be shot there. Likely, the familiarity, the memories spurred this, which are the very themes of the movie itself.

Regarding the title: Trier says:

Trier and Vogt knew they were on a knife’s-edge:

The premise of the film is as follows:

“Sisters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star (Elle Fanning). Suddenly, the two sisters must navigate their complicated relationship with their father — and deal with an American star dropped right into the middle of their complex family dynamics.”

This is, without a doubt, the best film Trier has directed to date. It’s an evolution and apotheosis of his themes, characters, and style. There are strong similarities to Olivier Assayas’ CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (2014) which we sort-of covered in our batshit 2-Part Fake Movies Within Movies Paired with Fake Drinks Within Movies with the equally batshit . A 2-Parter that Sentimental Value could now be included within!

Wine Trivia Question of the Week

The Wines

Zulal Areni, Vayots Dzor, Armenia

: I wanted a wine with a father-daughter dynamic, though maybe one with a functional vs. dysfunctional one. (Hard to find a working winery if it was dysfunctional.) Also a wine that matched this movie’s emotional complexity but lack of gravitas, lack of elevated emotional quality. I needed to match it’s more grounded, everyday, quiet and gentle approach to peering into the depth of difficult interpersonal relationships.

Areni is Armenia’s flagship red grape. The Areni for this wine comes from small, family-owned vineyards in Vayots Dzor that are 50-70 years old. Situated between 1,400 and 1,500 meters above sea level and completely ungrafted. (So pre-Phylloxera1)

Areni is often compared to Pinot Noir, and it does share similar body, structure, and fundamental flavors - red fruit, herbaceousness, good acidity, noticeable but not hefty tannins. It’s complex, layered, it’s contemplative, but not harsh, and not difficult.

This winery, Zulal, was founded by Aimee Keushguerian, daughter to Vahe Keushguerian, the man who spearheaded the modern wine movement in Armenia. Aimee grew up in Tuscany surrounded by her family’s wine business, but went to study economic development and social entrepreneurship in college, as her interest was in bringing Armenia’s economy into the modern era.

Then her father, Vahe, invited her to work the harvest at his winery Keush in 2015.

Aimee later founded Zulal Wines, dedicated to small-batch expressions of Armenia’s rare and indigenous grape varieties.

So a daughter who had no intention of following in her father’s footsteps, carvibg out her own space, while working to reestablish and reinvigorate her family’s traditions, roots, and culture for the modern moment. And a wine that contains multitudes without demanding anything from or forcing anythign onto its drinker.

P.S. Aimee is featured in A Cup of Salvation, the SOMM TV documentary longlisted for the Academy Awards, which follows her and her father’s efforts to make wine in both Armenia and the first wine from Iran in over 40 years.

: I wanted a wine that matched the watchability of this film, the ease of this film. But I also wanted it to contrast this film’s rather gloomy and austere style.

So it had to pull double duty. It had to be something that was a pleasant and easy drink. It also had to implore me to continue drinking and for the contrast, it had to be bright, sunny and colorful, in a way.

So I settled on the 2023 K Vintners Art Den Hoed Viognier.

It’s a lean and light to medium bodied wine that increases the salivary sensation or mouth watering. Like this film, every frame sort of makes you curious about the next. You want more. It’s sort of energetic and spritzy, like this film. There’s an exciting life behind the top layers.

It’s similar to the film, in that it is a very clean expression of some otherwise dirty and muddy components. It’s also similar in that the film is effortlessly watchable and this wine is effortlessly drinkable.

Note wise, you’re getting some honey suckle, maybe a little apple blossom, faint peach on the nose.

Drink it now. And also, watch this film now.

Located at the base of the Blue Mountains in Walla Walla Washington, K Vintners opened its doors to the public on December 3rd, 2001.

The site was originally homesteaded in 1853 with the adjacent farmhouse built in 1872. The winery grounds with Titus Creek flowing through the lawn and the old pioneer planted trees, is a little slice of heartland Americana.

The Winemaker: He loves to drink wine! Charles Smith, proprietor and winemaker, comes to Walla Walla after 11 years in Scandanavia. Originally from northern California, he has been involved with wine personally and professionally his whole life.

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Two of those fans are yours truly - having watched MacGruber when Netflix was still shipping phsyical DVDs to my mailbox - and , writer of :

How Not to be a TV Writer

Jon is a TV Writer who worked in the writers’ rooms of Veep (HBO) and HouseBroken (FOX). HNTBATVW is a guide to navigating a creative career in entertainment, warts and all.

By Jon Stahl

Jon is joined us for a lengthy chat on what makes MACGRUBER function as a comedy, and why this style of comedy for comedy’s sake needs to make a comeback.

We also chat about Jon’s own writer-producer projects happening as I type, most notably Casen Pointe: True Crime Detective the webseries that just had it’s second episode drop last week! (EDIT: it’s now up for a potential festival screening, so has been taken down temporrariily. It will return!)

Jon also has a 4-part micro-series hitting IG right now - UPSTAGE. Make sure to follow to see what he’s up to there.

MacGruber’s Origin Story

As for MACGRUBER, we cover the full genesis of the character and film, as reocrded in the Vanity Fair article “It’s So Dumb, and It Just Felt So Right”: An Oral History of MacGruber. You could pay for a subscription to read that, or just listen to our pod for free. We give you the highlights ;)

All Films and Shows Mentioned in this Episode

The Wines (and Kombucha)

Jon is living a mostly-sober lifestyle these days (boooo, jk, of course that’s healthy for anyone to jk BOOOOOO.)

As such, he chose a non-alcoholic beverage to pair with MacGruber, so not wine. But instead: Kombucha was a drink he didn’t like much at first (like most people when it comes to wine!) But the flavors slowly grew on him, until he loves the sour-tart, fruity herbal experience that most kombucha is. Just like MacGruber was a grower - “do I like this?” The character is actually pretty terrible. But then: “this is hysterical I love watching everything he does” (even though or maybe especially because he’s still terrible!)

Synergy Trilogy - raspberry, lemon, and ginger - is the perfect kick of all of the flavors listed above, to blend with that MacGrubery experience.

2022 Revelation Vineyards 100% Vidal Blanc

A Belgian mathematician and an Irish dentist walk into a bar…then walk out together, move to California together, fall in love with wine together, move to Virginia together, and buy a horse farm which they then turn into a vineyard together. Easy peasy. Like, where even is the story in that?

So short story short: they now make wine in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, including this Vidal Blanc, a hybrid grape that Virginia and most of the North East Coast loves (it makes an insane ice wine!)

Light, crisp, slightly honeyed in flavor profile, this is a refreshing, easy drinking white that you can sip with a comedy that demands little from you like MacGruber. The wine rewards attention - as does the movie - but neither demands it.

So the next time you’re f**king as hard as MacGruber and Vicki St. Elmo - or a Belgian mathematician and an Irish dentist cum winemakers - and the poor girl has to open-palm swat the beads of sweat dripping off your naked torso before they hit her in the face, make sure you have an open bottle - well chilled - of this refreshing Vidal Blanc from Virginia’s Revelation Vineyards. It’ll enhance the experience for you both, but won’t steal your attenion away. Or, sorry, sip it while watching MacGruber I forgot what I was writing about there for a moment.

Yes, Charles Fackam Hall2 Shaw. MacGruber is, naturally, a parody of MacGyver. The character is, essentially, the incompetent poor man’s version of that better man, so I thought: what kind of wine is usually highly regarded? And then what would the MacGrubery version of that be?

Four buck chuck Pinot, baby. Similar to Dallas’ pairing, this was relatively easy to drink and demanded zero attentiion. Surprisingly made with organic grapes, don’t ask me how. It’s riper and blacker than yoru typical Pinot, but still maintains certain expected Pinot characteristics, such as mild tannins, a certain acidity (though lower than in higher quality Pinots) and a distinct cola backnote that many American Pinots display.

Certainly, MacGruber would pair with a decent quality Pinot, too. So look for one $30 or over and you’ll be in safe territory. Dip under $30 and you’ll be enterting danger zone territory for most Pinots. Dip all the down to under $5 and somehow this is still drinkable. I don’t want to know how ripped off whichever vineyards got selling even this fruit this low, but what a very MAcGrubery thing to do. This CS Pinot is all thiings MacGruber in the shape of a fine wine.

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Even though it makes one squint to realize that 87Eleven (the David Leitch production company) is behind this movie, when 87North (the Chad Stahleski production company) just did Balleina (set in the John Wick universe) the good news is the two movies have very little in common. Plus PRETTY LETHAL gets badges for being written and directed by two women.

The script is the feature debut of actress Kate Freund (who plays one of the villains in the movie, too) and directed by Vicky Jewson, who helmed the Noomi Rapace action film Close in 2019. After the lackluster performannce of Close it seemed that Jewson might suffer the fate of Lexi Alexander before her - who directed Punisher War Journal and went straight to director jail ever since. It still took 7 years for her to get a second chance at an action flick, and I think she’ll do okay with her ballerinas-kick-the-shit-out-of-some-gangsters flick here.

Originally titled Ballerina Overdrive, the film follows an American troupe on their way to an international competition in Budapest. Their bus breaks down so they schlep their way to the nearest bar to make new travel arrangements. But when they insult one of the guests, who happens to be the son of a feared organizeed crime boss, the girls are targeted for death and have to fight their way out.

The ballerinas are played by Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Millicent Simmonds (the real-life deaf girl from The Quiet Place movies), and Avantika, with Uma Thurman making a wild comeback as the owner of the bar, a charracter who is a former ballerina herself, still looking for revenge for the injury that halted her career (mirroring Thurman’s own Kill Bill injury that had her disappear for far too long. I’m glad she’s back in literal action!)

The fights here are creative, as one would hope. It plays with the ballerina’s sttrenghts and movement patterns, sometimes perhaps too literally such as when the girls run through formations but have razor blades in their shoes, between their fingers, and/or hammers and knives in thier hands. It’s all gleefully silly, and occassionally even rises to being authentically thrilling as the film does recognize that even ballerina-strength can be overtaken by the pure brute strength of larger men.

In one scene, evoking Hostel or Saw, a torturer sets to peel the toenails off one ballerina, and she screams “No, no, please don’t-” he yanks a toenail off, and she doesn’t react. Which makes him react, and she laughs in his face:

The actresses each had a stunt double and a dance double, though they all trained for 1 month prior to filming, and Ziegler and Condor both had ballet training in their past, so did a significant share of thier own danciing and stunts. It’s a breezly, bloody, campy 91 minutes, but only 14.5 minutes of action (roughly 16% of the runtime) so don’t expect an action extravangaza. Expect a comedy thriller with 4 or 5 solid setpieces scattered throughout.

David Leitch and 87North have a thing for shaping action movies around unexpected protagonists. In Nobody and Nobody 2 it’s a middle-aged family man. In Silent Night it’s the literal Santa Claus. In Love Hurts it’s a real estate agent. In The Fall Guy it’s a Hollywood stunt man. And in Pretty Lethal it’s actual ballerinas, still dancing competitively.

In a number of the above, the protagonists are ex-assassins or the like, but in others they have no combat experience whatsoever. Which is the case with Pretty Lethal. And what that means is highly stylized, high concept action sequences that are too clever by half, but are certainly entertaining.

If I have one complaint, it’s that the male characters - to a one - are all terrible. Either actively horrible human beings or completely incompetent, and often both. I know we’re in the era of girl power and all that, but this felt particularly egregious. This is largely how male writers have showcased women for forever and ever, but I’m not sure flipping the script is the best way forward.

The whole time I was watching Pretty Lethal, I had an article penned by wine writer Margaret Rand in mind:

She uses a ballerina en pointe image for the article, ffs! In the piece, she writes about white wines that retain their elegance, their freshness, yet wherein tannins are present. Not as a straight-up skin-contact orange or amber wine (which is wine made from white grapes but soaked on the skins for weeks to months like ared wine is), but rather as a white wine with minor skin soakage or, say, noticeable extractions from pressing/crushing thick-skinned grapes.

We’re talking white wines that are still considered “white”. But have both astringency and texture - a certain powerfulness - added without overtaking the wine’s otherwise elegant nature. These wines don’t turn orange, but more the color that reminds you to drink more water, if you catch my drift. And this balance of power and elegance - of freshness and something stronger and bolder - is a perfect match for a ballerina action movie.

You can find numerous Eastern European wines - to match the setting of the movie - that would fit this bill, but I’m going to cheat slightly and pair mine with an Austrian wine. Which is a country that is sandwiched on three sides by the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia but is somehow not considered part of Eastern Europe. I say close enough!

Schödl Grün Grün Grüner is a beautiful example of what minimal skin cotact can do for a white wine, especially one made by a grape as naturally bright, fresh, and crisp as Gruner Veltliner. The color here is dark yellow, cloudy (drink more water!) with aromas and flavors of citrus and stone but then also bruised apples and honey. The wine is minimal intervention / “natural” but isn’t funky - it’s very clean, but that astringency and added complexity from the skins is instantly noticeable. It’s powerful without being over-powering. The elegance is as present as the power. It’s powerful elegance.

See if you can find a bottle of this, or look for a similar white wine with skin extraction but not to the point of being an orange or officially a “skin-contact” white.

And, honestly, an orange wine would work wonderfully with this movie as well. The heft of the full tannic profile in an otherwise white wine - it’s gonna play well with razor-toed ballerinas cutting up some bastards and smashing through scenery to survive.

Have you seen Pretty Lethal? Thoughts?

Have you ever had “powerfully elegant” white wine as defined this way? Do you have a favorite?

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Toyota transformed the plant into the most productive auto assembly plant in the U.S. with quality comparable to its Japanese factories.

That sounds like a pretty cool story, especially as it took place during a time of intense competition between the U.S. and Japan. GUNG-HO ostensibly adapts this story for the screen, with Ron Howard (fresh off Cocoon) and Michael Keaton (fresh off of Johnny Dangerously) at the helm. Jaoanese-American actor Gedde Watanabe (Sixteen Candles and Volunteers) takes the suppporting lead role, and folks, I’ll bet you forgot this movie ever existed.

There’s a reason for that.

Everything here is a caricature. The Japanese, obviously. But also the Americans. Small town factory workers, small town politicians; Japanese executives who try to bathe in the disgusting Pennsylvania factory river like it was a hot springs because I guess they’re children who don’t understand what a completley different fucking country is when they phiscally travel to it. Don’t get us started on the misogyny.

It was perfectly inoffensive in 1986, as all Ron Howard movies are; and perfectly offensive in 2026, as all Ron Howard movies are.

The film (sigh…) did well at the box office. Not amazing, but well: roughly $40M on a $13M budget. So believe it or not they thought it’d be a great idea to turn it into a TV show! You thought moviegoing Americans ate this shit up? Wait’ll the couch potatoes get a load of it! Somehow, we came to our sennses because it only ran 9 episodes.

Michael Keaton was replaced by Scott Bakula, and all the Asian actors from the movie reprised their roles because what the fuck else were they being offered?

Listen to us tear this movie a new one above! Then make sure you check out the pairing below, because while you might want to miss the movie, you do not want to miss these drinks.

The Drinks!

DAVE’S PAIRING

Viña Marty’s “Goutte d’Argent” Sauvignon Blanc, Aconcagua, Chile

Heat is not wine’s friend. But some heat is unavoidable during the process of fermentation. While temperature can be controlled up to a point, wine yeasts start to slow and die if the temperature dips below 10°C / 50°F.

Esppecially when making fresh, armoatic white wines, the less heat you can introduce to the wine - even during fermentation - the fewer aromas and flavors will be lost to the process. It’s the dream of many winemakers to disocover a way to keep wines colder, but still complete fermentation.

And Pascal Marty, winemaker at Viña Marty, stumbled upon a way: Japanese sake yeasts!

Unfortunately, only members of the Sake Productors Federation are allowed to use the yeast, and they had never before inducted a non-Japanese member. It took Pascal years of negotiations and pitching the idea, framing it as a blending of the two cultures in order to promote both cultures abroad.

It took years, but now Pascal is the only non-Japanese member of the SPF. And his “Goutte d’Argent” Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay are both fermented using Japanese sake yeast n°7 and n°9.

Vinification in stainless steel tanks with an average length of 90-130 days - which is very slow! Typical wine fermentation is 10-21 days! - at fermentation temperatures about 6-8 °C. Some soakage on lees to add body and creaminess. The saké yeast doesn’t like Sulphur, so minimal sulphites are used.

The Goutte d’Argent (silver drop) Label designed by Drops of God creators, and the wine is featured in the pages of the manga.

Citrus, white flowers, baked goods and vanilla, elegant with a creamy finish. Reviewers have claimed the wine is “...not very varietal, at least it doesn’t have the pungent herbal aromas of many Sauvignon Blancs in Chile.” Which begs the question how something can be “varietal” or “varietally correct” when changing the yeast changes those aromas and flavors.

This wine is spiritually on point for the movie Gung-Ho, while also countering its brash, loud Americanisms with its elegant, aromatic freshness. I desperately needed a wine that would be a counter-pairing to all the poorly aged elements of the film.

DALLAS PAIRING

Yeah, it’s not wine. It’s A Japanese old fashioned.

The Japanese Old Fashioned is the ultimate Gentleman’s cocktail, a perfect combination of Rye Whiskey, Bitters, an orange slice, japanese sugar and a Maraschino cherry.

Ingredients :

• 1 Japanese Sugar Cube (Kokuto preferrably!)

• 1/2 Orange Slice

• 1 Maraschino Cherry

• Orange Peel

• A Dash (or two) of Angostura Bitters

• Large Ice Cube

• 2 Ounces of Nikka Whisky

Directions :

• Pour a touch of water in the bottom of the rocks glass

• Muddle the sugar in the glass

• Add the cherry and bitters

• Pour in the Nikka

• Stir 50-100 times

• Twist and then garnish with an Orange Peel

Before you go! Do you love this Wine and Enertainment Pairing thing?

Then please make sure to subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice! And leave a rating and/or review if you’re so inclined. This truly helps the podcast grow and reach new listeners. No one is looking for a Wine and Movie Pairing pdcast, per se, but everyone seems to love the idea when they find it!

We deeply appreciate it. Thank you so much for being a Substack subscriber, and doubly - no, triply so if you also subscribe on a podcast platform. You da bestest.

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If you work in the wine or film worlds, and would like to attend a unique, relaxed mixed between the two industries, this is an event to consider attending!

First $500 worth of wine is covered, so show up sooner vs. later!

Presented by law firm Hirsch Wallerstein Hayum Matlof, they idea is to:

• find new up-and-coming talent, they want to know who the indie / NonDe creators are!

• expect lawyers, agents, managers, writers, filmmakers, and wine peeps galore.

• if you’re part of the wine world, this will be a great opportunity to meet LA area professionals who may find future use for your wine, store, bar, restaurant, and/or services.

• This could be a great opportunity to meet people for future sponsorship and/or branding purposes. Both industries are in a strange place, which means everyone will have an open mind and the opportunities will be diverse and many.

RSVP to this unique mixer by emailing Elle Baker: jbrowningassistant@hwhmf.com

Though, honestly, if you show up last minute, I doubt we’d turn you away. ;)

Note this is not a Vintertaiment hosted or planned event. We are simply sharing details of someone else’s event, though we will be there! And we do know the fella planning it. He’s a great chap. For a lawyer.

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We’re joined by our first NonDe (non-dependent vs. independent) Filmmaker guest - first time filmmaker who recently completed his feature film THE BIG BREAK which is currently being submitted to festivals. Follow Avi’s own NonDe Uprising podcast as well as updates on his movie at .

(Techhnically, of was the first NonDe figure to guest on our show, but she hadn’t begun her first film production yet! You can listen to that one below:)

Avi wanted to talk to us about possibly the most NonDe movie yet made: LISTERS: A Glipse Into Extreme Birdwatching. The documentary made by two brothers with zero financing outside of their own equipment and savings and released ad-free for any and all on YouTube:

LISTERS recieved 1.5 million views its first month online. And now sits at almost 4 million six months in. It’s a movie about two brothers who decide to join the community of burdwatchers competing in a “Big Year”, where you try to spot as many birds as poissible in a single calendar year. The record at the time of filming was 751 birds.

In this episode, we discuss what “NonDe” filmmaking in, how LISTERS fits into that category, why its important for the movement, how distribution plays into it, also who the documentary is all about the fine line between passion and obsession. Whether we’re talking about Birdwatching, Filmmaking, or Wine, when art meets passion it can lead to an unhealthy competitive mindset that can suck all the joy out of the thing.

Help Us List Listers On Letterboxd!

Letterboxd, for those who do nt use it, is the premiere platform for logging and discussing movies, much like the Merlin app is all about logging birds.

It’s “feature films” only - no TV, though that may be added in the future - no music videos, no commericals, no “content” from Tiktok or YouTube, etc.

And that’s where LISTERS ran afoul of Letterboxd’s rules. Being a feature film documentary exclusively avilable on YouTube - but not funded by YouTube as a “YouTube Original” - it doesn’t count a “feature film” via the baseline rules, and so Letterboxd has continually rejected it’s addition to the database even though dozens of users (ourselves included) have tried!

This rule is understandable superficially, as naturally they don’t want “content” videos to be submitted. But this rule makes little sense when a “YouTube Original” would count. When someone could self-distribute their film on Amazon Prime and it would count. It basically only penalizes independent / non-dependent filmmakers wh do not want to list their film on AVOD (ad-supported) or SVOD (subscription-supported) platforms.

So we started a petition to try to convince the decision makers that LISTERS is the exception-to-their-rule that should be considered more seriously. If we’re truly going to be non-dependent on any given platform, we need platforms like Letterboxd to not enforce dependency, and allow users/film fans to help them spot and determine the worthy considerations.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION TO HELP US HELP LISTERS FANS!

Possibly the most heartening thing you can do in this modern world is make shit happen. As we learned with getting Substack to finally give us our “Film and TV” category, it’s entirely possible. But it takes a community.

You all are the best.

The Wines

E. Guigal Cote du Rhone Rouge 2022

Avi had to select his “Aha!” wine, or eureka wine, which is what we call that first wine that a person suddenly takes notice of and realizes “oh shit, I think I like this!”

And E. Guigal’s Cote du Rhone Rouge was Avi’s Aha! wine back in the day. And what better to pair with a docementary all about falling into lifelong obsession with a thing / hobby / activity. In Listers, it’s birdwatching. For all of us here reading a Subsatck like Vintertainment, it’s wine and movies.

What was your own Aha! wine? For the more filmic among us, what was your Aha! movie?

2017 FE Trimbach Pinot Noir Reserve from Alsace

Hailing from the region of Alsace which has a dedicated, fervent birdwatching community! Dallas let the place lead the way, matching the wine with a country that’s all about them birds. (We believe it’s storks in particular in Alsace.)

Known for thier Gewurtztraminers, Rieslings, Pinot Noirs and Pinot Gris, you don’t have to do Noir if you don’t want to, but Dallas found this Pinot smooth and velvety, only slightly tart, just like the movie.

2023 Planet Mouraz "Palhete" Nina (50/50 Red and Orange Wine)

OR

Find a "Palhete" (pahl-YET) of any kind! A field blend of red and white grapes co-fermented together.

I had to pair a film about seeing as many birds as possible in a single year with a wine that’s all about co-fermenting as many grapes as possible in a single wine in a single year!

A “field blend” is when you pick a whole vineyard / “field” and make a single wine with all the grapes therein. And a “palhete” is the Portuguese term for when that includes both red and white grapes!

This Planet Mouraz “Nina” (named after the kitty in the picture, who is sadly no longeer with us, but her legacy lives on with this wine!) is a 50/50 blend of red and white grapes, over 20 different varieties, all crushed together and co-fermented together on the skins, so essentially a 50% red 50% orange wine. It’s chillable, and “crushable” (chuggable) and low in ABV (12.5%) so you can sip this freely through the whole 2 hour documentary.

The “Nina” is avilable in Portugal, other parts of Europe, and California, though you can also just search for a “field blend” or “palhete” wherever you’re located. Drinkk a wine that as much a potpourri of grapes as this doc is a potpourri of birds in exquisite HD nature shots.

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Yet despite encouragement from the studio, as well as from of such landmark talents as Tsui Hark and Sammo Hung, Lam turned down opportunities to become a director until actor Danny Lee - mega-star of John woo’s THE KILLER and Ringo Lam’s CITY ON FIRE - invited Lam to co-direct One Way Only in 1981, which became the first directorial work for both of them.

Lam’s first film as solo director was the crime drama Brothers from the Walled City in 1982 which he followed with an even more refined and progressive urban thriller Men from the Gutter in 1983, both produced by Shaw Brothers. Even though Lam is not considered part of the Hong Kong New Wave of the turn of the 70’s and 80’s, these two films display an identical approach to the films of Dennis Yu or Johnny Mak, the core difference being that Lam was not an auteur in the classical sense, meaning he was the director and cinematographer of the films, but not the author of the script.

Nevertheless, Brothers from the Walled City and Men from the Gutter, just like the contemporary HK New Wave films, combined popular genres with personal drama, their characters and conflicts grounded in the everyday social reality of Hong Kong and they were filmed on actual locations, not just studio sets. (As was the norm prior to.)

In 1984, Lam directed the comedy Three Stooges Go Undercover, which was written by the legendary Wong Jing, who is also credited as the author of the original story of Lam’s previous comedy, One Way Only. Lam’s cooperation with Wong - who later became one of the most influential writers and producers in Hong Kong cinema - continued with lensing Wong’s two directorial projects Prince Charming (1984) and The Flying Mr. B (1985). In 1985 both Lam and Wong left Shaw Brothers for Golden Harvest - the studio where Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung now resided - where they continued their collaboration with Ghost Snatchers in 1986 and The Seventh Curse in 1986. Both films were written by Wong Jing, the first one with him in a starring role and the second produced by him. And these films marked a new direction in Lam’s career.

The Seventh Curse in particular was the first in a series of gonzo adaptations of the “Wisely” novels. (Also sometimes called the “Wesely” novels, which I think was the intended name, though “Wisely” for some reason became the more common translation!) Or actually, Seventh Cursse was an adaptation of author Ni Kuang’s Dr. Yuen series of which Wisely was a supporting character. Then Wisely began to star in his own novels, an insane 161 stories in 156 novels, to be exact! In the movie, Chin Siu-Ho plays Dr. Yuen, while Chow Yun-Fat plays Wisely. The film is part Indiana Jones adventure, part horror, part martial arts action spectacle, and would cement Lam as the go-to director for films heavy with mechanical and optical special effects.

In 1987 Lam directed Killer’s Nocturne, an epic revenge drama set in the gambling milieu of old Shanghai and written by Manfred Wong, the later writer and producer behind the immensely popular Young and Dangerous series. The film is infamous for the INSANELY NOT-P.E.T.A. APPRROVED scene where a man actually boxes a kangaroo. He gets his ass handed to him, handily, but it’s still an unfomfortable sceen to watch.

In 1988 Lam paved the ground for the infamous CAT III - or “Category III” - exploitation boom with his rape and revenge movie Her Vengeance. Another milestone in his filmography is the historical erotic comedy with fantasy elements Erotic Ghost Story in 1990, which kick-started the whole stream of copycat erotic films with historical/fantasy settings starting as the Sex and Zen series in 1991. At the same time Lam directed two spectacular adaptations of Makoto Ogino’s manga series Spirit Warrior – Peacock King in 1988 and, at least partially, though he was fired part way through, Saga of the Phoenix in 1990, both starring Yuen Biao and Gloria Yip.

Lam’s most notorious film, however, is them movie we’re here to talk about today: his 1991 over-the-top gorefest RIKI-OH The Story of Ricky. Meticulously true to its source manga material - so much so that the original trailer for the movie has shots of the film lined up with panels from the comic!

This adaptation of the violent manga Riki-Oh by Masahiko Takajo and Tetsuya Saruwatari combines both then-current trends in Lam’s filmography: 1) high concept adaptations of Japanese comics, and 2) hyper-violent exploitation films abundant with bodily fluids. And the film spotlighted the anxieties of the early 90’s: foreign capitalist modalities forced upon a people, the loss of freedoms, the need to fight - violently so - to push back against such inhumanities.

Even though the film later gained cult status in botht he East and West, it did not perform well in local cinemas. It was the first film to receive a CAT III rating due to violence alone, and local adult audiences shunned it. It grossed only HK$2.M, whereas Lam’s previous films for Golden Harvest usually grossed around HK$8 to 10 million.

Then RIKI-OH found its audience when it hit home video: kids that couldn’t see it in theaters!

Yet despite this late success, Lam’s last film to date was The Cat aka THE THOUSAND YEAR CAT in 1992, just one year after RIKI-OH, an hallucinatory mixture of action, horror, comedy and science fiction that was another adaptation of a Wisely story. And this one, more than any other, was fully preoccupied with the handover - the year 1997 is spoken of prominently, with an alien force invading the very beings of the HK people. And as with all Lam Nai-Kai movies, the effects and storytelling are absolutely over the top and gonzo.

Sadly, after THE CAT, Lam Nai-Kai disappeared from the film scene, for reasons that are still undocumented, and has yet to return. Even though his films are currently undergoing a significant Renaissance on blu ray and 4K, finding whole new generations of fans across the globe.

So with that said, strap in, grab a glass of wine or your beverage of choice, and let’s talk about the first film of Lam Nai-Kai’s that landed with Western audiences and helped open the door to his films receiving the wider recognition they’re appreciating today.

Bonus Clips Cut From the Main Episode

Once Upon a Time We Remebered Phone Numbers

How to Curse Without Offending. (Maybe.)

Now I Want Actual Wine Peeps (Plus: Fermenting Peeps)

Did you know I actually did a Wine and Peeps Pairing a couple of Easters back? Well, I did:

The Wines We Paired With RIKI-OH

DALLAS: This is a film of fever dreams. It feels like something I would have written, especially act three, if someone had come to me and asked me to write a third act that leaves the audience scratching their heads wondering, “I don’t know what the hell i just watched but I’ll take another glass please?”

And for me, the experience of Shiraz is like a kick of black pepper coming through a refined jam. And that’s what this film is. The filmmakers are obviously seasoned and refined but the brutal, assaulting kick of the gore and stunts just slaps you around or punches you through the face, to reference one of the greatest action sequences in history which is in this movie.

So for that, I went with the 2020 Paringa Estates Mornington Peninsula Shiraz. (A cool play on words as the full name of the area is “Mornington Peninsula Shire” so turn “Shire” into “Shiraz”!) It’s wonderfully Jammy, cool climate expression of a Shiraz with a fairly subtle peppery note. It’s not very heavy. And at 5 years old it feels elegant. There’s also this faint note of forest floor that’s kind of reminiscent of that earthy smell you find in blood.

DAVE: Speaking of blood, let’s talk about Touriga Nacional from Portugal! The 2018 Kelman Touriga Nacional, Dao, Portugal to be precise.

The primary grape used in Port production, and considered by many to be Portugal’s finest grape. Thick skinned, with dark pigments, resistant to humidity and disease, it’s perfect for the hot humid climates of the Douro (where Port is made) and the Dao - where this particular wine is made.

Touriga makes a very deep colored, almost black red wine, but with silky tannnis, especially when there’s 8 years of age on it, like with this 2018. Black plum and prune, tobacco leaf and wet wood, damp earth and a raw meat tang on the finish. It’s bloody and raw, yet silky smooth, like this movie.

And like this movie’s protagonist, Ricky, Touriga Nacional is working hard to free itself from its current confines and break free into the wider world. DINIZ CELLARS sells this wine in California, and can ship to many States in the USA!

Th-th-that’s all for this week!

Join us and next week, when we cover a NonDe / indie documentary that needs a lot more attention than it’s getting - LISTERS.

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And that’s not even his most notable accomplishment! Oliveira directed 31 feature films and an almost equal number of short movies and documentaries...and nearly all of them were made after the man turned SIXTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD.

In case you thought it was ever too late to start.

Now, Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira - his full Catholic name - his circumstances were a bit unusual. Being Portuguese in the 1930’s, there was precious little cinematic infrastructure in his home country at the time. And to make matters worse, the authoritarian regime of a different Oliveira - António de Oliveira Salazar - began in 1932 and continued unabated until 1974, when it was finally toppled by a military coup and then followed by The Carnation Revolution - a civil revolt where hardly a single shot was fired, but instead civilians put carnation flowers in the rifles of military personnel. I’m not making this up.

Manoel’s ability to make movies had been almost completely curbed during the Salazar regime, as Oliveira was known to be a criitc of the governnment. He was able to make precisely three feature films before the Revolution, and one of them was after Salazar had already had a stroke, and the regime was already beginning to attempt reforms in 1972. Then, starting in 1975, at sixty-seven years of age, Oliveira’s career exploded and hardly ever slowed.

But let’s rewind, because we aren’t here to cover his entire 31 title filmography. We’re here to begin where Portuguese cinema truly began:

In 1931, Manoel saw Walther Ruttmann’s documentary Berlin: Symphony of a City. Ruttman’s film is the most famous of a small, short lived silent documentary film genre, called “city-symphony film”. These films portray the life of a city, mainly through visual impressions in a semi-documentary style, without the narrative content of more mainstream films, though the sequencing of events can imply a kind of loose theme or impression of the city’s daily life. Oliveira said that Ruttman’s film was his “most useful lesson in film technique”, but that he also found it “cold, mechanical and lacking humanity.”

This led to Oliveira directing his first 21-minute short documentary: Douro, Faina Fluvial, a portrait of his hometown of Porto. He was invited to show the film at the International Congress of Film Critics in Lisbon, where the majority of the Portuguese audience booed. This would prove an ongoing reaction to Manoel’s early films from his own people.

Just in case you ever thought you should quit because you’re consistently booed by the audience that means the most to you.

Nevertheless, critics praised the film; but for all the good it did. Oliveira struggled to make another film for over 10 years. His family were wealthy industrialists and agricultural landowners. His father owned a dry-goods factory, produced the first electric light bulbs in Portugal and built an electric energy plant before he died in 1932. At 17, Manoel joined his brothers as an executive in his father’s factories, where he remained for the majority of his adult life when not making films. In a 1981 Sight and Sound article, John Gillett describes Oliveira as having “spent most of his life in business...making films only when circumstances allowed.”

Just in case you thought not being able to make films for 15 year stretches at a time while you worked menial jobs meant you should quit or in itself constituted a crisis. I mean, it does. But tomorrow always comes.

Fifteen years after his first attempt at filmmaking, Oliveira made his feature film debut in 1942. Aniki-Bóbó is a portrait of Porto’s street children and based on a short story by Rodrigo de Freitas. Non-professional actors were cast to portray the children, an Oliveira hoped to captuure the energy and ambiance that he loved about his city. The film was alrgely ignored upon release, and it’s poor reception forced Oliveira to abandon other film projects he was involved in at the time, after which he dedicated himself to work in a vineyard that his wife had inherited.

In case you thought it was ever safe to quit your day job when you’re living through an authoritarian regime. Americans, I’m looking at you.

But time has been kind to Aniki-Bóbó, which today is considered:

And ANIKI-BOBO, the 1942 debut feature of Manoel de Oliveira is what we discuss in today’s episode folks. I just took my first trip to Portugal, and to celebrate, we had to watch our very first Portuguese movie, which is also pretty close to being the first narrative Portuguese feature film of note in the country’s history.

So please give it a listen! Either above or on your podcast platform of choice.

The Liqueurs

Licor Beirão, simply known as Beirão (Bay-rao), is a Portuguese liqueur from the Beira region of Portugal. Originating in the 19th century, it is the most consumed alcoholic spirit in Portugal. And it is phenomenally good.

I tried it for the first time in Portugal, annd brought a bottle home. Dallas tried it and immediately declared it “a problem”. There are stores that will ship in America, and/or see if you can find some for yourself wherever you are!

Production of Beirao began in the 19th century in \Lousã, in the Beira region, from where it got its name (Beirão means “from Beira”). It is made from a double distillation of seeds and herbs, including mint, cinnamon, cardamom and lavender, from all over the world, including former Portuguese colonies of Brazil, Sri Lanka, and India.

Much like other “aromatic” licqueurs steeped in roots, seeds, herbs, and spices such as Vermouth, Beirao was originally produced in the 19th century as a medicinal product for stomach aches. In the late 19th century alcoholic beverages were no longer qualified as medicinal but the liqueur was kept in production in a small factory owned by the son-in-law of the original producer. In 1929 the liqueur entered a contest on the 2nd Beirão Congress where it earned a gold medal and its name of Beirão.

The liqueur is still produced and bottled at Quinta do Meiral, according to the original secret recipe, by double distillation of 13 different aromatic seeds, herbs and spices. After being weighed out and mixed, the plants and herbs are mixed with alcohol, and remain in maceration for a minimum of about twenty to twenty five days. The resulting contents are then twice distilled in copper alembics.

The use of natural plants and herbs is one of this liqueur’s main distinctive factors, since it doesn’t make use of essences and artificial aromas — rather, the aroma used is produced locally, an alcoholate made from the base ingredients. Once the alcoholate is ready, it is then added into a mixture of alcohol, sugar and water. This mixture is then tested to ensure it fits the secret recipe’s parameters.

A punch line used in its advertising in the 1960’s, O Beirão que todos gostam (”The one from Beira which everybody likes”), had a subtle reference to their authoritariian ruler, António de Oliveira Salazar, who was “the one from Beira which not everybody likes”.

The ideal way to drink Beirao is over ice (one medium to large ice cube, if possible) and a twist of lemon, squeezed to add its oils to the liquid. It’s sweet (but not too sweet!), and bursting with Sasparilla-like flavors, then the lemon twist will add a zip of brightness. It perfectly matches the energy of the children and the film itself, while remaining complex in total flavor profile, easy yet deep, immensely pleasing, just like ANIKI-BOBO.

Dallas selected another Portuguese liqueur, this one traditional to the region of Obidos, made from that tart/sour Ginja cherry indigenous to Portugal. Typically referred to as “ginginja” (get it? GIN-Ginja!) this is a deep, luscious cherry liqueur, sweet yet tart, and once again “a problem” / “dangerous” in Dallas’ estimation. Listen to the episode where we downs a third of the bottle while we’re recording!

And there is also a third Portuguese liqueur that could fit ANIKI-BOBO - their almond “Amarguinha” (Am-are-gween-ya). Similar to Amaretto but more balanced, not quite as sweet, and a deeper pure almond flavor. Do yourself a favor and search for any/all of these!

And yes, I know it’s wild we didn’t pair a single Portuguese wine with this first Portuguese film! But my next TWO pairings in the next two episodes will both feature Portuguese wines, so those recommendations are coming!

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On that note, be sure to read ’s write up of THE ALABAMA SOLUTION, too. His post many months back is what put this doc on our radar!

From The Yard To The Arthouse

WEEKEND SPECIAL: You Need To See The Alabama Solution

There is a new documentary on HBO and HBO Max that is not news to me, though it’s something everyone who reads this Substack should see. “The Alabama Solution” – perversely titled because there isn’t one – is about the state prison system in Alabama, considered one of the least-safe places in the world. What’s pivotal about this documentary is what I’ve…

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8 months ago · 22 likes · 7 comments · Decarceration

This Episode’s Chapters

• 0:00 The Perfect Neighbor

• 4:58 The Alabama Solution

• 7:38 Intro to the Show

• 10:41 Wine Trivia Question of the Week

• 13:55 The Perfect Neighbor, Act 1 + Wine Thoughts

• 26:53 The Perfect Neighbor, Act 2 + Wine Thoughts

• 34:30 The Alabama Solution, Act 1 + Wine Thoughts

• 40:52 The Alabama Solution, Act 2 + Wine Thoughts

• 57:20 Santa Julia Natural El Zorrito Orange Chardonnay 2024

• 1:03:04 La Bascule “Babushka” Rose of Syrah 2022

• 1:05:56 Elwood Prison Wine, South Carolina

• 1:08:44 Les Vignerons d’Estézargues Alma Viva 2023 (Pet Nat Orange)

• 1:15:11 Outtake

Wine Trivia Question of the Week: Irish Prison Wine?

Highlight: Cruel and Unusual

The Wine Pairings

Santa Julia Natural El Zorrito Orange Chardonnay 2024

DALLAS: Bodega Santa Julia was created in honor of Julia Zuccardi, part of the third generation of leaders from the Argentinian Zuccardi Family. The Santa Julia winery represents the family’s commitment to producing the highest quality wines through sustainable practices that protect the environment and uplift the local community. And ultimately that’s my hope for the institutions and communities featured in both of these docs.

For Julia, and the Zuccardi Family, sustainability is not just about working in harmony with the environment, rather it is a comprehensive approach that supports the land, the farmers, and the overall health of the local community in terms of educational, physical, and financial health.

Zorrito, The Little Fox, by Santa Julia is an impressive orange wine. This organic, natural wine from Mendoza is made from 100% Chardonnay, fermented on the skins for 45 days. Unfiltered, vegan, and made with minimal intervention, it checks all the boxes for a “natural” wine while maintaining clean flavors and refreshing acidity.

Expect an amber-colored wine with aromas of apricot, lemon, orange peel, and a distinct floral blossom note. On the palate, it shows a bold structure, medium to full body, and a tannin-like texture from the extended skin contact.

La Bascule "Babushka" Rose of Syrah 2022

DAVE: For THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR, I chose a wine that was all about a father-daughter / parent-child relationship. This bottle here is the La Bascule “Babushka” dark Rose of Syrah. La Bascule is a natural wine project created by Fifi (a renowned New York City natural wine importer) in collaboration with Stéphane and Caroline Morin of Domaine Leonine in Roussillon, France. Fifi always wanted to make his own wine but knew he would never be able to own his own vineyard. So he was able to team with the french Domaine and created La Bascule. “Babushka” is Fifi’s pet name for his daughter, Maya, who also designed this wine’s label!

And even better, this dark rose, it’s a halfway point between a red wine and a white wine, a “Blanc de noir” which is what they call a white wine made with a red skinned grape. So it’s a halfway point between white and black, and that’s to celebrate the mixed race neighborhood that came together to make justice happen in the wake of Perfect Neighbor’s tragedy.

The wine is chillable, with some wonderful dark red fruitiness, blueberry and hibiscus, with a touch of spice and earth and white pepper. It’s an Vin du France because it bucks certain rules to be labeled as from Rousillon, but the grapes are all from the Rousillon region.

Elwood Prison Wine

Before I get to my specific wine pairing for THE ALABAMA SOLUTION, I do need to shout out the truest, best pairing but it’s one that won’t be possible for most. And that’s what our Wine Trivia Question of the Week was about: PRISON WINE.

BUT DON’T MAKE YOUR OWN! Not because you have to be in prison to do it (you don’t.) But because authentic prison wine runs the risk of botchilism. So don’t do that.

However, there is a winery in South Carolina - Elwood Prison Wine

Their mission is to raise awareness about the injustice in the judicial system and to support programs that help children of incarcerated parents. They believe that every glass of wine can make a difference. Their wines are carefully handcrafted in South Carolina and their fruit is locally sourced from select farms within the state to ensure a consistent taste and high quality.

Their origin story is quite unique. After Justin Fox, learned that his incarcerated father was making wine in prison, he thought he’d give it a try at home. And what began as a curiosity has now turned into a fully realized business with one fantastic ethical core. Elwood Prison Wine. The label does, in fact, feature his father’s Prison ID number.

https://www.elwoodprisonwine.com

Les Vignerons d'Estézargues Alma Viva 2023

But for my main wine pairing, I selected a wine from a co-op winery, to represent the collective action at the core of THE ALABAMA SOLUTION

From the Rhone: Les Vignerons D’Estézargues (Este-zarg) is a co-operative cellar in the small town of Estézargues, very close to Avignon and the Pont du Gard in the southern Rhone valley. Now Co-ops typically receive grapes from their members and then make wines from them in large batches, not mentioned vineyards or winemakers. The wines are sourced from many different vineyards from all over the region and typically the focus is on quantity. Not quality. These are commonly some of the most technologically and chemically produced wines in Europe.

Estézargues was established in 1965 and, as early as the 1980s, shifted towards natural winemaking thanks to the arrival of Jean-François Nicq, a talented winemaker influenced by the ideas of natural wine legends like Marcel Lapierre. Nicq put the co-op firmly on track towards respectful farming and practically no additives in the cellar. No commercial yeast, no enzymes, no gum arabic, no acidifiers, and also almost no sulfur. “We use a minimal amount of SO2 at bottling if needed, to make sure the wines are safe even when exported overseas, but that’s it,” says Armelle Rouault, current winemaker at Estézargues.

Another feature rather untypical of a coop is Estézargues’ focus on vinifying many of their terroirs separately—a practice promoted by Nicq’s successor Denis Deschamps. Deschamps even had the cuverie doubled in 2018, thus making it possible to showcase the unique personalities of the grower’s best plots even more. These wines proudly bear the name of the particular domaine on their labels (such as Genestas or Grès Saint Vincent), and represent “a great way to valorize the work of each grower—we vinify the wines in almost the same way so it’s really up to the grapes to show what’s in them.”

This here is their Alma Viva pet nat orange wine.

28% Grenache Blanc, 22% Clairette, 22% Bourboulenc, 22% Roussanne, 6% Viognier

Partial skin contact during fermentation. Delicately textured, so some friction, plus the light fizziness. The skin contact lends a touch of bitterness but the wine remains elegant, notes of apricot, mandarin orange, yellow floral aromas, and beautiful minerality. It both matches the content of the doc while also contrasting the heaviness of the material and especially the weight you’re left with at the end - and note it’s a heavy ending. So I needed a wine to counter that, not weigh me down additionally.

I wanted some friction (skin contact, fizz) but nothing heavy. I paired to match the protagonists of the doc, not the villains. So collective action, personable, uplifting, with some astringency but nothing actually offputting.

Thoughts on the movies? The wines? Thhe pairings?

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I’ve been hawking these wines for the past 9 months and finally got to take a trip to Portugal itself, and meet the people behind the wines and see the vineyards / wineries, all so I could collect first hand knowledge vs. prattling off tech sheet data and overly branded bios. The trip and room/board was covered by the company, and yes, that’s a big ol’ fatty fat perk of this job.

The trip wasn’t all sunshine and roses. Almost literally zero sunshine, in fact: the country had just sustained two weeks of excessive rainfall that caused mudslides and downed trees, the aftermath of which was litered across the country as we traveled it, with many roads closed or partially closed for repairs. Luckily, it barely rained the week we were there, though the sun hardly peeked past the unbroken sheet of grey that was the sky.

Our first half-day in Porto was gloriously sun-soaked, and that was about it.

Worse, our whole team got food poisoning at the end of Day 2. We awoke in the wee hours of Day 3 and folks, I haven’t exeperienced a misery like this in years and years. It’s one of those ordeals that has you say out loud “I just want to die” and you mostly mean it.

BUT…the people were beyond lovely. While we all suffered, the place we stayed allowed us to recover without charging us more, helped us get Immodium and anti-vomit meds so we could handle the 1.5 hour drive we needed to undertake to get to our next location, and the wineries bent over backwards to accomodate our shifted schedule.

We got scammed in Lisbon with our Air BnB accomodation and a lone waitress at a Pizza parlor stayed open late while our boss had to argue a refund, go through good faith attempts with the scammers (she even let us borrow her phone when they wouldn’t pick up our boss’ number anymore - and it worked! And then our boss had to wander back to the prooperty down the street with her phone and she was like “it’s no worry, it’s fine.” And then she gave us lots of booze and pizza to pass the time.)

So that’s the last I’ll say about the trials, because the country is beautiful - even without the sun - and the people even moreso.

DAY 1: PORTO

After an 11 hour flight to Lisbon with a quick connecting flight, we spent our first half day in the city of Porto, the birthplace of Port, the fortified dessert wine.

It was a rare sunshine-filled day, which made the city look absolutely beautiful. A very old city, founded in the 1100’s, the major Port houses line the river here, where street performances and touristy overpriced food and beverages are sold.

I did try a Porto Tonico (dry white port and tonic water) cocktail, came with a lemon wedge over ice and yikes was it good! Drinkable on a warm day like a non-alcoholic beverage would be. So dangerous! And now I knwo what dry white port is good for - imma be honest, I was pretty baffled by its existence until I tried it with tonic.

DAY 2: VINHO VERDE and Quinta de Lourosa

Our first winery visit was to Lourosa in Vinho Verde, with winemaker Joana de Castro. Her father founded the winery and pioneered the LYS vine training system which exposes the most number of grapes to air and sun as possible - a good thing in a region as cool and wet as the Vinho Verde!

As mentioned before, we arrived after weeks of heavy rains, so the vineyards were still very wet, though the drainage here is exceptional - they do not have probles with water in the Vinho Verde, and having your vineyards on slopes with soils that drain easy is key.

The vineyard:

The winery:

The old cement tanks:

The roots here don’t grow deep:

I wish I’d taken photos/video of the bedrooms we stayed in - all rock walls and rustic vibes. It was great, but alas, no photos.

Wine of the moment: lest you thought Vinho Verde was all crisp whites, Lourosa makes a DEEP red Brut sparkling made from Touriga Nacional. It’s one of my favorite wines that we carry. Like a less fruity, very earthy Lambrusco.

DAY 3: DOURO and Conceito

As we drove through the Douro, the land seemed to be madde up of 90% vineyards, it was wild. Both sides of the car, as far as the eyes could see. Nothing but vineyards.

The city we stayed in had some of the narrowest, windiest streets I’ve ever experiences, with cobblestone paving. My boss drove it in a manual like a champ but I would be terrified to do the same!

Here we visited Conceito and Invinicble, from winemaker Rita Ferreira.

Believe it or not, Rita planted the only hectare of Austrian Gruner Veltliner in all of Portugal. And makes an incredible champanoise style sparkling with it!

DAY 4: DAO and Casa de Mouraz / Planet Mouraz

The Dao is where we went post-food poisoning. I was the only one willing to go out with my boss while the others slept the day away. Well worth it, but I was dizzy and weak as a kitten and then the winemakers took us into this vineyard with giant granite stones, like some sort of granite Stonehenge, the vines snaking between them, and then had us goat-leap between them. To say that was pushing things for me is an understantement. I didn’t fall and die, but yikes, I sure could have.

One of the stones was drilled into (see above pic) to turn it into a lagar. They’ll cover it, then foot stomp the grapes on the rock, let the juice drain into the rock, and gravity carries it through the rock and into the winery!

The Planet Mouraz label names each of their wines after a farm animal. Here’s the real Bolinha posing with his bottle named after him. A wild orange wine with 2 month skin contact and 1 year of lees aging.

DAY 5: OBIDOS and Qunita Varzea de Pedra

Varzea de Pedra is a minial intervention group, just like Casa de Mouraz, but the vineyards couldn’t be any more different! Mouraz’s vineyards were almost wild and pagan in their spread and growth. Varzea de Pedra had some of the most orderly, well thought out and kept vineyard we saw the whole trip.

Beans were planted in-between rows trap and release nitrogen into the top soil. Other flowers were allowed to grow wild for additional biodiversity. It was beautiful.

A number of new wines will be imported soon to California from this group. They have a wine they managed to keep under $10 wholesale for the Albertsons / Costco / etc market, and an AMAZING Castelao red wine that I cannot wait to taste around town.

DAY 6: ALENTEJO and Quinta do Mouro and Bojador (Rocim)

The Alentejo is the southern-most part of Portugal, a less talked about region as it’s hotter, flatter, poorer, though it makes up nearly one third of Portugal’s total landmass!

We had two exceptional wineries to visit here, the first being one of our most important - Quinta do Mouro, a wine we’ve placed in Michelin starred restaurants. The winery is considered one of the very best of the Alentejo region.

The founder won the property in a poker game back in the 1970’s! Or rather, he wone the money to purchase the property and land. Back then, it was the same price as a Lamborghini, so he had to choose between buying either-or. He chose the land.

The next stop was the ROCIM winery. Many of you reading this will be familiar with Rocim - they’re seemingly everywhere in America these days. But we don’t represet Rocim itself. Insetad, we rep their head winemaker’s personal passion project - BOJADOR.

DAY 7: LISBOA (aka Lisbon)

Our final day was a free day - at last! We got to wander the city of Lisbon. It was pretty AF.

And th-th-th-that’s all about my trip to Portugal, folks! Now I need to sleeeeeep.

BONUS PORTUGUESE WINE AND MOVIE PAIRING

To celebrate my first trip to the country, I decided I had to watch my first true blue Portuguese movie! (And not just Portuguese language aka Brazilian.)

And what better selection than the 1942 debut feature film of the godfather of modern Portuguese filmmaking, Manoel de Oliveira.

Aniki-Bobo (named after a counting child’s nursery rhyme, like “eeny meeny minie moe”) was largely ignored upon release, and Oliveira did not make another feature for 20+ years! But when he returned, he would continue making films until he was 106 years old in 2014 (!!), becoming the oldest still-active filmmaker in history.

Aniki-Bobo was made during the authoritarian regime of a different de Oliveira, António de Oliveira Salazar. As such, filmmakers were limited in what they were allowed to explore and how. Manoel wanted to make a love letter to his home city of Porto, and selected a cast of non-professional cast and crew, showcasing the battle between freedom and kow-towing to authority in the shape of natural childhood rebellion.

Here, the kids are undergoing weirdly adult dilemmas - a love triangle, poverty, disenfranchisement, tests of loyalty, doubt, and consequences for both decisions made and circumstances outside one’s control. The kids are forced to evolve fast, mature emotionally, while the adults are portrayed as largely petulant and childlike, less coherent, eloquent, and more quick to temper than any of the children.

There’s a critical moment at the end of Act 2 that is wonderfully profound: a tragedy that occurs by happenstance, yet one of the kids was *about* to perhaps cause it anyway. The kid gets the blame, even though technically he didn’t do it, though we all saw he might have done it if given a second or two more to accomplish it. Is there blame for that? Should there be any guilt? It wouldn’t have been quite intentional on the kid’s part, not the tragedy itself, but likely they would have caused it.

These are the kind of thought provoking situations the movie explores while ostensibly being a rambunctious lark about children in Porto, under the shadow of WWII. From what I understand, the style here is very different than what Manoel would become when he returned to feature films 20 years later. He’s generally a minimalist, though Aniki-Bobo is more maximalist, frenetic and fueled, the camera darting with the same energy the children display.

All in all an breezy watch but with deeper content than it seems. Ostensibly a Little Rascals caper, de Oliveira had a lot he wanted to say and do with this film, and it would probably award multiple viewings in that context. Definitely recommended. Can’t wait to see more from Oliveira and Portugal in general.

Pair with…

BEIRAO, baby! (see the last photo under Lisbon in this post) The sweet, complex, utterly scrumtuous Portuguese liquor is perfect for this high energy, youthful, sweet, endearing romp.

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We of course refer to RUSH HOUR, though this was not the first time Chan had attempted to cross over. Listen to our full episode to hear his exploits during the early 80’s, how his failures in America led to an absolute Renaissance for him in Hong Kong, then how he eventually found himself in a position to try again in 1998.

In the wake of this enormous success, Jackie in on record as saying “Before Rush Hour, I hesitate. After Rush Hour, why not? I can do anything.”

Leornard Ho, his Godfather at Golden Harvest, the HK studio that produced all of his major hits in the 80’s and 90’s, had forbidden Jackie from doing anything other than action, believing that this was what the fans wanted. After Leonard’s passing - while Jackie was still on the Rush Hour set - Chan was free to explore anything and everything. And those who are familiar with Chan’s late 90’s / early 00’s output know that this is precisely what he did.

First up: ROM COMS!

Originally set only to produce, Chan quickly had the script rewritten to make him the romatic male lead. While also peppering in the action that he loved to do. While the action in GORGEOUS is absolutely incredible (two blisteringly fast paced fights with superstar wushu talent Bradley Allan) the film remains predominantly a romantic comedy, starring Shu Qi and co-starring Tony Leung and Emil Chow (pitch perfect as Chan’s “frenemy”).

So…can Jackie Chan do a Rom Com? Yes and no. Listen to the full ep to find out more.

This episode of Vintertainment is dedicated to Brad Allan, the stuntman and eventual action choreographer man who helped usher in Rush Hour, plays the most likeable antagonist ever in Gorgeous, designed the action for Scott Pilgrim, Shang-Chi, Kick-Ass, Wonder Woman, the Kingsman franchise, and more. Brad passed away in 2021 at the age of 48, from a sudden and unexpected heart attack. His charisma, talent, passion, and genuineness are all horribly missed.

And his action sequences with Jackie in this movie are unforgettable.

The Wines

Dallas’ Wine Pairing

CONCEITO 10yr Tawny White Port, Portugal

Dallas was all about the sweet to pair with this ridiculously sweet movie!

An island girl who talks with dolphins, finds messagees in bottles, and heads to the big city to find love and never gets taken advantage of? I thought this was planet Earth and these were human beings in this movie.

But a tawny white port was just the thing. CONCEITO (con-shay-too) is a Portuguese-owned and operated port house, though most are still British, mirroring how this movie comes in the wake of the British handing Hong Kong back to the mainland.1

This is part of winemaker Rita Ferreria’s inaugural release. 10 years in small barriques, the small barrels allow the wine to oxidize (wood is porous so allows the wine to take in air slowly) over the course of 10 years, turning it “tawny” or light brown. This is a white port, so white grapes only, making for a wine that is toffee and maple syrup in the glass, though not too heavy - Rita has a gentle touch on her ports, keeping them from being too cloyingly sweet.

Which is perfect for Gorgeous: it’s sweet yet light, buoyant, nothing too heavy, nothing violent or dangerous or dark. It’s all lightness and gentle sweetness.

Dave’s Wine Pairing

IDOL RIDGE "String of Pearls" Sparkling Rose of Saperavi, 2021 Finger Lakes, New York

Part of the Martin Family Wineries and Distilleries, the family - two parents and their son - ran a commercial beekeeping business up and down the East Coast, when they began searching for new ways to utilize their honey. That’s when Co-Owner, Bill Martin, got creative. After experimenting with home winemaking he began exploring making wine from honey.

What was once a family starting a new business venture out of their garage has now grown into established wineries and distilleries throughout upstate New York. Including the “Idol Ridge” winery.

I brought this Sparkling Rose of Saperavi to our “Weird Wine” get-together a few weeks back:

Saperavi is a thick-skinned, spicy, meaty red grape. And this sparkling wine, even though just a rose style (minimal skin contact) was a bit darker than your usual sparkling rose, a bit meatier and earthier. It’s a champagne style, so contains those extra bready/yeasty notes. And I wanted a wine to match the odd and magical tone of the movie. Also a wine that was pretty (or gorgeous, ha!) to look at. And this fit all those bills.

The winery also makes a Sparkling Blac de Noir out of pure Lembergere aka Blaufrankisch!

No shipping to California, though, boooo. I got mine on a wine bidding site. But look for your own wine that you’d call magical, pretty, and slightly odd.

Or, go Dallas’ route, and go sweet. And watch Gorgeous. It’s a gem.

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This idea is not really mine, but was directly taken from and her book The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters. On a recent podcast interview with Ezra Klein, Priya said:

“When you’re gathering about everything you’re kinda gathering about nothing. When I started researching for The Art of Gathering, I wanted to basically demystify how anyone can create a meaningful, transformative gathering. And I interviewed over 100 types of Gatherers, who other people always credited with creating transformative gatherings. A Hockey Coach, a choir conductor. And they all had two things in common:

1) They didn’t have a mental image in their head of what ‘hockey practice’ had to look like, or what ‘choir practice’ has to look like.

2) But the second thing was: they were okay with not being for everybody. They were okay with having a disputable purpose that not everyone would agree with.

When you are thinking about bringing people together, you have to start with asking ‘Why do I want to do this? What is the need in this community, in this workplace?’

And a disputable purpose allows people to understand: what is this for?”

The whole interview is dynamite and full of gold nuggets, big fat recommendation for those with an hour to spare:

She also mentions how we need to embrace conflict in a constructive, healthy way, as gathering humans together will always bring friction, bring different views and beliefs together in ways that shouldn’t be avoided - bringing them together is the point!

Equally as dysfuctional as unhealthy conflict, is “unhealthy peace”. Conflict avoidance wihtout actual purpose, essentially. Peace for peace’s sake. Instead, embrace congregating for disputable reasons that won’t be for everyone. That even the people its for, will hash out the specifics and the takeaways and shape the gatherings going forward.

An Unhealthy Peace (Monoculture)

Elsewhere on Substack, argues that the falling out of the middle of monoculture is about venues and products (restaurants and food; theaters and movies, etc.) being for fewer and fewer people, rather than being for everybody. The prime example being A24 films: they’re objectively better than a lot of the “midddle” tier movies of the past, but they’re catering to a more niche crowd.

I can’t argue with the symptoms he lays out, or the timeline of them, but I think his prognosis is precisely flipped: middle tier films are for fewer people because they have to be, and should have been all along. I’d actually argue most of them have been precisely this - middle tier films were rarely released “wide” in terms of absolutely everywhere. They played dozens or maybe hundreds of theaters back in the day. Even at their height maybe 1000+ theaters vs. the 4000+ that a truly wide release would play. That’s because, even back then, we knew these films wouldn’t play for everyone.

Rodrigo seems to be remembering the middle tier of the 90’s with someewhat rose-colored glasses and at least a whiff of revisonist history. Or maybe he, like me, always lived in cultural hubs where it seemed these films were ubiquitous because, for our area, they were. Or maybe he, like all of us who grew up with video rental stores, is misremembering whether these films were as present in theaters as they were, or whether they were discovered in a Blockbuster. That sounds mainstream, but that Blockbuster probably had single digit copies of the middle tier film, vs. the 100+ copies of Mission Impossible 1.

The middle tier was never for everyone. They’re movies for specific tastes, POVs, interests, and moods. They are movies made for disputable reasons.

Here’s where I agree with Rodrigo 100%: the middle of “middle America”, of monoculture, dropped out because we were priced out of giving a shit. For $20, we’d take the family and accept what we were spoon fed. For $100, we decided to stay home and each watch our own movies in separate rooms. We don’t believe the megaplex monoculture theatrical experience for a 4-quadrant family is worth $100, not often anyway. But we do believe seeing a movie we feel a deep resonance toward is worth $25-$50 for the 1-2 people who eagerly want to see it.

The theatrical experience is going to continue to hemorrage the bland, inoffensive, nobody-actually-cares tentpoles and fully unremarkable upper middle tier ($20M-$100M), whereas streamers will continue to thrive with such films, reaching a global subscriber base that can all be a global monoculture together, for a film or two or three. Then the nooks and crannies of streaming will be filled with, and arguably the meat of theatrical going forward will be movies made for specific audiences. Movies made for disputable reasons. Movies with purpose. Because those are the films that audiences will believe are worth the time, effort, and money necessary to experience theatrically.

Monoculture, in many ways, is an “unhealthy peace”. Togetherness for togetherness’ sake, but to no real purpose save its own existence. It keeps the culture blind to too many critical issues, seen only through the POV of specific groups, rather than allow for the actual variety of POVs that make it up.

Reject unhealthy peace. Embrace gathering for disputable reasons. Don’t be for everybody. Because that’s the same as being for nobody.

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Chapters

0:00 The Year Was 19 ***ing 64

6:50 Intro

10:47 Wine Trivia Question of the Week

14:42 Development and Production of MISSISSIPPI BURNING

20:01 Orion Pictures - The Oldest Unchanged Studio logo?

23:38 Historical Accuracy and Legacy

36:16 Act I - Synopsis + Wine and Movie Thoughts

56:13 Act II - Synopsis + Wine and Movie Thoughts

1:01:42 Act III - Synopsis + Wine and Movie Thoughts

1:05:01 2022 Bodkin Wines “Light Skinned” Zinfandel

1:09:29 2022 Domaine de Belliviere Rouge Gorge

1:16:32 Outtakes

The Wines

Dave’s Wine Pairing

Bodkin Wines 2022 "Light Skinned" Zinfandel

At first I wanted a wine of “tension” - the movie starts with nothing but: tension between whites and blacks, local law enforcement and the FBI, our two main FBI agents played by Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman. And “tension” in wine is when there are two or more elements at play, in a tug-of-war with each other, such as acidity and sweetness, fruitiness and bitterness/earthiness, but the tension always remains. None of the elements trip into overpowering the others. It’s kind of like “balance” but more energetic, more playful. If any of that makes sense.

Then I wanted a wine of “violence” because all the tension in the movie erupts and the tension goes away. So a wine that hurts, that’s brutal, that has a literal “attack”, probably a wine I don’t necessarily enjoy, but one I might be in the mood for, such as when I’m watching particular movies of American history.

But ultimately, I needed a wine of hope to pair with MISSISSIPPI BURNING. And I found it in Chris Christensen’s Bodkin Wines’ 2022 “Light Skinned” Zinfandel. A black-owned winery, with a winemaker of mixed race parents who himself married mixed race. You can see the family tree on the bottle, and Zinfandel is a crowd pleasing, easy drinking wine, and this dark rose is only 36 hours on the skins, keeping it “light skinned” and even easier and chillable.

I loved the hopeful story of the family, bringing the two sides of the movie into a single family, and the “light skinned” bit also matched the light-skinned POV / white savior motif that pervades the film. And it was the easy drinking I needed to counter-balance the heaviness of the subject matter.

Dallas’ Wine Pairing

Domaine de Belliviere Rouge Gorge 2022

Pinot d’Anuis, a grape we’ve both found to be challenging - though not necessarily in a bad way. Much like the conversation sparked by this movie.

Aromas of red cherry, blood, white pepper, orange juice, bee pollen, and roses, a delicate touch of smoked meat, too. On the palate it's sanguine and tangy, nice tart cherry notes combine with notes of herbs, flowers, and raw meat, tannins are fine and grip lightly, acids are easy.

I wanted a wine that made me contemplate - every sip had me think about the fact that I was drinking wine. I had to consider the experience. Little is easy about the sip, but equally, little makes me want to put it down.

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