Happy 4th! Bonus Movie Pairing and Birthday Report

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F + a Pays d'Oc Roussane

Just a quick post to say: HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

Let’s all try to remember what actually makes “America great”, that we’ve never lost it so don’t need to find it “again”, but we are in danger of losing it if we let our vague sense of disappointment with the economy trump (ahem) our concern with social liberties and rights.

Yesterday Was My Birthday!

So of course I popped open a birthday wine. As I mentioned once before in a now-ancient post, my family has some history with Chateau Montelena (the Tubbs era of the Chateau’s ownership!) But I’d never tried one of their wines before.

Well, Petite Sirah is my all-time favorite variety, so I decided to celebrate my birthright/history by popping open this 2002 Chateau Montelena Petite Sirah!

Even at 22 years of age, this bad boy still has tannins to spare! They’re “fine” tannins by now, and while the wine exhibited the expected dark juicy fruit (blackberries, black currant) it also had this surprisingly red fruit zing on the backend, bringing the overall flavor closer to something like boysenberry. Medium acidity and very long finish. It was a celebratory wine for sure!

I also had some of this limited edition ice cream from Jeni’s - inspired by David Bowie’s Space Oddity, PURPLE STAR BORN is a Concord Grape and Black Currant ice cream. Note this is not a sorbet, but actual ice cream. The damn thing soaks up light just like a Petite Sirah. If ever there was an ice cream to pair with such a wine, this is it!!!

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F + Roussane

On a lark, I put on the just released BEVERLY HILLS COP 4 movie (aka “Axel F”, and no, that isn’t a good title but does anyone really care about the title?) and had a ball with it. I’m not even that big of a BHC fan. I only watched the first two in the past handful of years - I never saw them back in the day! And I have no memory of BHC 3, I can’t even recall if I‘ve seen it or not, which I’ve heard is pretty par for the course on that one. Apparently the studio just thought Eddie Murphy would make the script funny by ad libbing, but Eddie wasn’t having a good time in those years so the whole thing was a mess.

AXEL F is thankfully a different story. The script is solid - nothing ground-breaking, it’s filled with all the callbacks and cliches you’d expect. It’s a nostalgia movie to be sure, but as someone else wrote on social media, it’s cliche but not at all lazy.

Everyone is having a blast. The actors aren’t phoning it in, and neither is the stunt department. The set pieces are wild, including a standout helicopter sequence where Joseph Gordon-Levitt kinda sorta knows how to pilot one but not really, so we get what is essentially helicopter slapstick. With an ACTUAL HELICOPTER. It’s awesome.

Kudos to Kevin Bacon for delivering yet another fantastic villainous role.

Paired With…

I found this excellent budget Pays d’Oc Roussane at my local shop for an affordable $12.99

Pale straw in color, medium body, medium-high acidity, it’s got the golden apple, citrus, and barnyard flavors I most associate with the variety. It’s light on its feet, purely chuggable chilled, with a touch of seriousness and more challenging flavors developing as it warms. It matched the light-hearted, comedy-tinged violence of BHC perfectly.

A’ight, folks, take care, enjoy your holiday, and if I’m a day or two late with our latest podcast episode, mea culpa. I had a bday AND a holiday happening back to back! We shall see how much editing I get done tonight. But man, I’m feeling LAZY. :)