Winemega's critic..

"Mondovino", a low-budget documentary by American Sommelier-turned- filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter,  has been a surprise hit at the box-office since it opened in November 2004, pulling in some 250,000 viewers around the world in just over a couple of months. Two years in the making, the film sees Nossiter journey and wandering from the French vineyards of Bordeaux and Burgundy to Argentina, and from Sardinia to California's Napa Valley to lay bare the global wine industry and some of the faces behind it. 

Wine has been a symbol of Western civilisation for thousands of years - but never have the stakes been so high, or the fight for its soul so desperate. Nossiter meets the wine makers, the tasters, marketers and critics. Mondovino weaves together the family sagas of billionaire Napa Valley power brokers, the rivalry of two aristocratic Florentine dynasties and the fight of three generations of a Burgundian family to preserve their few acres of land. First there are the huge multi-nationals, represented by the likes of chortling French wine consultant Michel Rolland (see an interesting interview of M. Rolland at Elitewine.com) , by Burgundy's largest wine producer J-C Boisset, the Staglins in Napa Valley or by the vast empire of the Mondavi family (which in the meantime was merged with Constellation Brands, Inc. - for US$ 1.6 bio). To them progress and profits are everything, and nothing should stand in the way of perpetual expansion of business. Countering these bigwigs there are what Rolland derogatorily dismisses as "peasants", like Languedoc's Aimé Guibert, Sardinian wine maker Battista Columba or the amiable Hubert De Montille from Burgundy. To them wine is synonymous with tradition, beauty and personal freedom. 

Vino’s on the table but make no mistake, this dish is about individualism, identity and its corrosion. The result is an often humorous film that points that power has become concentrated in the hands of a few multi-national producers, who with the help of ultra-influential critics such as the ubiquitous Robert Parker or Wine Spectator's James Suckling, are flooding the market with variety-based vintages that are as bland as they are easy to sell. While the French producers who are holding out against what they consider cultural imperialism are essentially (and to my view falsly) depicted as maverick heroes, Nossiter explores how giant American firms are exerting ever greater influence on independent producers in Europe, by buying up vineyards and imposing their methods of production which lead to increasingly standardized and homogenized wines. Basically, it's what you think and know and sense in the roof of your mouth: globalisation equals the end of small vineyards and the rise of conglomerates. In the film, wine has been hijacked by money, like everything else. 

Lecture paradoxale

But Mondovino is much more than a grape lover's lost paradise. It's a transfixing look at the human faces behind a multi-billionaire dollar industry where success and failure, and many livelihoods, can rest on the reviews of a couple of, albeit independent, journalists, the whims of a winemaking corporation (the Mondavi family) or the reluctance of people (the Guibert / de Montille clans) to break with traditions. It's clear where director Jonathan Nossiter's sympathies lie in this fascinating study of how globalisation has impinged upon something as traditionally localised as wine making.

Could vineyards really be a political battleground in an increasingly monolithic, globalised society? According to Nossiter, his depiction of the wine business is a mirror on the world as a whole. "What is happening in wine is happening to you," he says. "Wine is an expression of civilisation, but it is also an expression of power. It was the Romans who introduced wine to the Mediterranean basin, and for them it was part of their mission to civilise. If you'd made a film about wine in Roman times it would have painted a very revealing picture. Today the picture is paradoxical. On the one hand never have so many people taken seriously the notion that their place of origin and identity have meaning and are worth preserving. And yet never has the world been under such threat from the forces of homogenisation." 

A leitmotif in the film is the ubiquity of dogs, owned by virtually everyone and running around chateaux and domaines. Dogs are so much part of the country life, and also represent a way of bringing things “back to basics” – dogs are very basic in a lovely way. 

Mondovino is very much worth to be seen. But it is a partisan documentary in many ways. One has to recognize the broad use of some questionable filming techniques, which skilfully direct spectators towards the Director's political theses. Nevertheless once warned, wine amateurs will certainly find there several interresting subjects of reflexion on wine and globalization.

For Winemega.com Alain Bringolf

Studies, Articles, Wine Chemistry, Archives

TOP