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Whilst driving tomato stakes in my host’s garden during the upstate sojourn above, my efforts were frustrated frequently by implacable, defiant stones lacing the soil.
This afternoon episode was enough to trigger the thought: “Might this plot of earth be suitable for the cultivation of the vine? Could this slope possess that ideal melding of clay and schist, some aberrant pocket of kimmeridgian to send grapevines burrowing deep? They grow vines in the Finger Lakes, don’t they?”
Alas, absent some epoch-shaking geological and climactic transformation or, say, genetic engineering - the Catskills are unlikely to be challenging the world’s great wine producing regions any time soon.
That’s not to say that successful wine could not issue from these hills. After all, the historical allure of winemaking resides in coaxing forth the unique characteristics of a particular parcel of soil and sharing its expression via the vinified grape. That’s why sometimes a friend’s backyard wine can be disarmingly moving, it is the taste of the homestead and what a family - sometimes for generations - has used to toast triumphs and drink away indignities.
Winemaking is the articulation of the very ground we walk on - terroir. Or is it?
Mondovino, a new documentary by Jonathon Nossiter, delves deeply into the global reach of world winemaking to address that question. With no narration, the film allows the subjects to tell their own story and, in so doing, pours questions of what constitutes profitable experience right into our wine glass. It outlines the ancient clash of Man with Nature vs. Man over Nature in present terms.
Ultimately, Mondovino weaves the complex, global struggle of our time across a trellis of vines and into an insightfully sweeping opus.
Tantalizing that winemaking can reveal human nature in the same way that wine reveals terroir: At times, the film is like a 1982 vintage, Saint Julien, Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou, I was recently afforded the astounding pleasure of tasting... downright profound.
Posted by mark at July 15, 2005 11:41 PM