Mondovino (Jonathan Nossiter, 2004) is a documentary about wine, wine-making and globalization. And itâs one of the most intelligent documentaries ever filmed. Nossiter made it happen with a hand-held camera (held by himself), brilliant editing (of 500 hours of footage, also by himself) and naught much else. He didnât even need a crew.
What the film says is this. Mankind has been making wine for thousands of years, with more or less the exact same method. Despite that, wines from different parts of the world have been distinctly different from one another, due less to the special tricks each producer or culture uses, and more to the fact that soil, weather, and the variety of grapes is more than enough to make all the difference. But recently, with the rise of the wine industry and the sommeliersâ habit of grading wines, an amazing thing has happened. Wines from all over the world, as long as they are produced en masse, taste the same. Good or bad? The film doesnât say. It insinuates, though. Sarcastically, mercilessly, and brilliantly.
Thereâs a problem with âexpertsâ âgradingâ wines. Itâs not -necessarily - that their opinion is flawed or compromised. Itâs that their opinion makes or breaks a wine in the market, and therefore winemakers strive to please them. Now, if that struggle began and ended in things like quality of production, there would be no harm done. But it doesnât, it goes all the way to defining a wineâs taste. The upshot is that when taste A is in vogue, lo and behold, the mass producers of France, Italy, California, Chile, or anywhere in the world, go and make a wine that tastes like A. And diversity, the very core of making, drinking and enjoying wine is gone forever. Remember in the old days, when the year of the wine was of utmost importance, because each yearâs weather changed the taste? No more of that. Technology makes your wine impervious to the weatherâs whims. Hell, it makes your wine impervious to anything at all that could make it distinct. Good or bad?
Good OR bad, one side-effect is that smaller scale producers often follow the lead of the industry. That leaves a small minority, those happy few winemakers, who donât begin to make a wine aiming for a âpopularâ and âacceptedâ result. They simply begin to make THEIR wine. Without industrial methods like micro-oxygenation, which improve the overall quality but flatten the taste, what matters most is soil, micro-climate, weather, grapes. Locality. Specific place and time.
Mondovino is not, under any circumstances, âneutralâ. It takes a stand, about wine and about politics. But it doesnât go about it yelling and insulting and crying âwolf!â or âevil corporations!â. It has no voice-over whatsoever and no music score. No comment is given because none is needed. The facts speak for themselves and so do the winemakers, big and small. Itâs what documentaries are supposed to be, minus the boredom they often entail, and certainly without the dirty tricks weâve seen lately, like cuing violins over sad scenes, aggressive voice-over, and no option left to the viewer at all. What youâve read was simply my take of the film, which (as I happen to know) coincides with that of the director, but the exact opposite conclusion can also be reached and has been reached, if your preconceptions are different. And if you miss a few insinuations, perhapsâŠ
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