Season 3 begins!
And we couldn’t think of a better way to kick it off than by having two of our favorite wine podcasters guest star. Joe and Carmele Mele are the husband/wife duo behind THE WINE PAIR PODCAST, possibly the only wine podcast that outdoes us in sheer energy and irreverancy.
In each episode they cover a different kind of wine, discuss the history and details, then try two bottles both under $25 and see how they perform. It’s a fanastic pod and I highly, highly recommend it to anyone already into or wanting to get into wine.
And today they brought us GAME NIGHT - one of the few movies they can agree on as a couple, their ultimate date night movie. Starring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams, directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (Vacation, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) it follows a married couple and their friend as they believe their playing an ultimate “game night” - but the danger is actually real!
Make sure to listen to our opening and close, as we shipped up some one-of special songs just for our guests, riffing on the lyrics to thier own podcast’s theme song! (Which was written by Joe and his band 20lb Gumball! Track number 3 below, “Too Much”.)
The Wine Pairings
To honor The Wine Pair Podcast’s adherence to bottles <$25, we also made certain our pairings for GAME NIGHT were all under twenty five bucks.
NOTE: While the write ups below give you brief conclusions for our pairings, the podcast episode will walk you through how we arrived at the decision in much more detail, Act by Act of the movie.
Dallas’ Pairing
OZV Old Vine Zinfandel, Lodi, California
GAME NIGHT is sweet, irreverent and peppy. Like a peppery jam. It also gave Dallas hints of the movie Clue. Zin has the right amount of jammy, fruity and peppery, a little higher in alcohol (especially in California), fruit-concentrated, and less acidic. The intersection of blackberry jelly and chocolate, peppery and satisfyingly tannic, with a decent ABV (14.5%), Dallas wanted fruity, dense, but easy. This OZV sells for $10-$15 retail.
Joe and Carmela’s Wine Pairing
Kirkland Signature Champagne Brut (Costco brand, so that’s where you’ll find it!)
Joe and Carmela focused on the food that the characters ate throughout the movie, and not just the wine (which was mostly a lot of Chrardonnay which the characters rightly used to sterilize wounds rather than drink it - HEY-yo!)
So they needed a wine that would pair with a wide range of foods, plus the movie contained a number of celebrations - falling in love, getting married, getting pregnant, not dying at the hands of organized crime, etc. And lastly, they’ve seen this film ~30 times (!), and sparkling wine is something they can drink anytime, much like watching this movie.
Generally sells for $30 (ack! They broke their own rule! But, hey, that’s what you do when you finally guest on another podcast, no?
Dave’s Pairing
2021 Concha Y Toro “Casillero del Diablo” Reserva Carmenere
85% Carmenere, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon
Roughly $16-$20 / bottle
So I knew I wanted a darker red, with sibling grapes that could be said to have a rivalry with each other, one seeemingly more respected and successfull than the other, giving the other an infertility complex. (Just like in the movie) But then that plot twist came in the final Act!
So I also wanted a wine with a plot twist. Thankfully, the wine I’d already selected fit that bill: Carmenere and Cab Sauv, sharing the same Cabernet Franc father.
Sauvignon is the elder, seemingly more successful, more celebrated sibling. Carmenere is the less used, less celebrated, but it just had to find it’s people - in this case, it had to walk away from the French and find the Chileans!
In Chile, it’s now one of their flagship red grapes, a point of distinction from Cabernet which is grown everywhere. Carmenere is also more interesting, with a smokey / spicy / sexy note that Sauvignon lacks.
And PLOT TWIST! Carmenere in Chile was thought to be Merlot until the 1990’s, when DNA testing revealed that almost all Chilean Merlot was in fact the nearly forgotton Carmenere, which expressed itself in Chile so much better than it ever did in France where it was only good as a blending grape and is barely grown there today. So if you see any pre-1990 bottles of “Merlot” from Chile, that’s very like in fact Carmenere.
And man, good timing, the Chileans then dodged the “I’m not drinking any fucking Merlot” Sideways calamity that came only a few years into the 00’s!
Our Sponsor - Curated Wine Shop
Many thanks to our official sponsor, CURATED WINE SHOP! No idea where to begin finding a wine that pairs with your movie? That’s okay, almost literally no one does, outside of ourselves, so that’s understabdable. But Curated is here to help. They accept every Vintertainment-inspired challenge, and will CURATE the selection to match your palate. Just tell them what you’re trying to pair with, your budget, your preferences, and they will show you the way.
Curated is a boutique wine shop on La Brea Avenue, mid city Los Angeles, founded and operated by peeps currently and previously part of the entertainment ecosystem. They carry an ever-changing, wide-ranging selection of small lot artisnal wines, from the known and comforting, to the completely unquie: reds, whites, roses, oranges, sparklings, dry wines, sweet wines, and everything in-between. They pour a themed flight Wednesday - Sunday, offer tiered membership including the Curated tier, of which I am a memeber. This is where they curate 3 bottles every month to match your preferenes, even when your preference, like mine, is to drink the weirdest frickin’ things that fit within the monthly price point.
Curated is also the place where we will soon be hosting LIVE and IN PERSON Wine and Movies nights, the first of which is being planned for March. We plan to make it a night of short films by local LA filmmakers, each paried with a different wine, so If you’re in the LA area, keep an eye out for that.
And you can do so by heading to Curated-Wines.com that’s Curated-Wines.com where you can browse ALL the upcoming events at the shop and also browse most of their wine selection.
