The Best Wine Movie Ever Made

...is about something entirely different, but exactly the same

For as long as I’ve worked in and around the wine industry, there has been a prominent line of reasoning that the “wine writer” is generally a corrupted beast, compromised by their starry-eyed love of wine who has an addiction to free wine samples, and is willing to write puffy and sanctimonious stories in order to wiggle their way into the orbit of the Winerati and stay in their good graces.

Wine publications like Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiasts are the crooked king-makers of the wine world willing to sell reviews and glory to the highest bidders. Meanwhile, the wineries, usually led by charismatic, true-believing winemakers who sing melodious songs glorifying the wisdom of the all-knowing terroir, lure in the wine writers, ensnaring them in their well-varnished lair of “lifestyle”. For my part, as a publicist, I fit into this world of plastic beauty by helping to facilitate the unethical collaborations of winery, magazine, and writer.

This kind of critique of the business of wine and wine writing has usually been voiced by folks with a righteous tone who claim to have seen past the curtain. Or you heard it from the bitter outcasts who toil in cellars making wines that don’t break 90 points and receive blessings from the kingmakers. You can still hear this lament today by those who fancy themselves part of wine’s “counter culture” and believe the wine industry has become part of the globalist agenda that has shed honesty and authenticity in favor of the pursuit of sameness that is too obviously linked to a history of oppression.

There is a long exposé buried in this critique of wine. Or maybe it’s a book. This line of criticism might even be explored in what would likely become a too-long movie in which the winemaker gets the girl only after forgoing fame and fortune to do his own thing in the wilds of Mendocino County.

“Mondovino”, that 2004 documentary by Jonathan Nossiter, tried to link wine with the evils of globalization by trashing flying winemakers and Robert Parker, Jr. as the enemies of diversity and individuality in wine. But the film was too boring, too mean and too strident.

When wine bloggers arrived on the scene in the mid-2000s there was a feeling that their independent status might help pull back the curtain on the way the wine writing and wine publishing world really worked. This opportunity turned into the odd and unfortunate circumstance whereby defenders of the current winery/publisher/writer axis accused wine bloggers of being unedited, climbers of little talent just seeking free samples, and being willing to write swill about swill just to get the bottles. It wasn’t a completely unfair attack, but it was one-sided.

There is, however, one document that accurately and irresistibly portrays the struggle of the wine writer to make their way in the wine world; to pursue their love of the drink through prose without being corrupted by the beast, and does so better than any other previous or subsequent attempt: The Film Almost Famous, particularly its first 25 minutes.