Filmmaker takes on French wine establishment
December 8, 2004 - The Star-Ledger
PARIS—It might not be easy to see at the local supermarket, but the world of wine is going through a dramatic sea change. Taste and tradition are duking it out against globalization and the bottom line, and though the label on your wine might be beautiful, the fight is anything but pretty.
Filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter stood in the middle of the ring with a camera on his shoulder to show us what’s at stake. The result is “Mondovino,” a sprawling State of the Union address for the world of wine.
American-born Nossiter, who will be presenting the film at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on Friday and Sunday before its nationwide March release, arrives for his English-language interview in Paris speaking Portuguese to a friend’s golden retriever, Italian to the woman behind the bar and French to someone else in the room.
He puts all of these languages (along with Spanish to boot) to use in “Mondovino,” and has succeeded in polarizing the wine community, by either opening their eyes or raising their hackles.
Here in France, which Nossiter calls home for the time being, wine is becoming an increasingly touchy subject, and some here say the industry is upon the biggest crisis it has faced in 50 years.
“Ironically, the wine world is in tremendous shape,” he says, sending skeptical eyebrows skyward, but he’s referring to the corporations that make the most money through wine and not necessarily the smaller producers, who are feeling a pinch.
Despite the global trend, the French (and European) wine crisis poses many challenges to “traditional” winemakers.
In a nutshell, “New World” wines have surpassed French wines on the global export market, and within France, wine consumption is heading south. Appellations (name control laws), which are often used as a sort of “Good Housekeeping” seal for wines, have caused many labels to effectively market themselves into a corner, particularly when they try to export themselves around the world.
In France and around the world, bigger labels use “flying winemakers” (think “wine consultant” with gobs of market-changing, wine-altering power) to help create what they perceive as the taste of influential wine critic Robert Parker and other influential noses that know. The fear is that the wines they create are becoming more and more homogenous and they threaten to swamp smaller winegrowers who continue to make unique wines.
No one seems to know how to put things back on track.
“(The wine industry) has never been so threatened by various and complex movements toward homogenization,” says Nossiter, who is particularly concerned with the globalization of the industry.
Ergo “Mondovino”?
Nossiter’s path to the film seems to be a mix between happenstance and providence. He started working in the restaurant industry at the age of 15 and nurtured his passion for food and wine by becoming a sommelier, eventually designing wine lists for such New York landmarks as Balthazar and Il Buco.
He also began a parallel career in film, notably as an assistant on 1987’s “Fatal Attraction” and eventually working his way up to directing Stellan Skarsgard and Charlotte Rampling in his last film, 2000’s “Signs & Wonders.”
“The last thing I wanted to do was make a film about wine—I can’t stand the snobbery,” he says. “I’ve always been horrified by all the wine talk.”
“I had this vague sense that I was on to something,” he says, “I felt like a detective uncovering webs of clues.”
Four years and as many continents later, Nossiter presents us with an opus that has sent shock waves through the wine world.
Nossiter appears to have a pretty clear agenda, mocking the homogenization he refers to while heralding producers around the world who continue to make unique wines of terroir—an elusive French word he describes as a “sense of individuality and place.”
“The film never tries to be an objective encyclopedia,” he says flatly, and in “Mondovino,” no one is safe, particularly if theirs are the hands behind the globalization of wine.
Along with an Upper East Side wine importer, one of the movie’s semi-heroes is the wine mogul, Robert Parker. Parker’s 100-point rating system has become the consumer bellwether, and his scores, particularly if there’s a big fluctuation from year to year, can make or break a winemaker.
“If there’s a legacy for Robert Parker,” Parker himself says in the documentary, “it’s that he leveled the playing field. In this stratified caste system of wine, dominated by elitists and reactionaries, Robert Parker brought an American, a democratic, point of view. I think that has been a revolution.”
“Parker looked around (in 1982 Bordeaux) and saw a corrupt system (that was) betraying the terroir,” says Nossiter. “The irony is that there’s a greater range (of wines) than there ever has been, but as we’re speaking, there is less access to that range.”
After seeing the film and speaking with the casually dressed Nossiter, you get the feeling that he might fancy himself as a bit of a Parker with a video camera.
Somewhere around this point in the interview, still scratching behind the dog’s ears (dogs play a prominent role in the film), Nossiter unshackles himself, starting with hypermarkets.
“We all see what happens when you see tremendous concentrations of power,” referring to the owner of the French hypermarket, Leclerc, and that store’s often monochromatic wine selections. “I don’t know how that guy sleeps at night.”
Someone else who might have trouble sleeping is French flying winemaker Michel Rolland, who plays a prominent role in the film.
Nossiter refers to him as “Michel Rolland, who would like to shoot me ...”
Roland, who was on a micro-oxygenation kick the day the cameras were rolling, was “shaking with rage” after seeing the film for the first time, says Nossiter.
That said, the filmmaker isn’t feeling guilty.
“He’s a fully mediatized man of the 21st century,” he says. “Whatever’s in the film is exactly representative of him to the percentage point.”
Likewise, the Mondavis have been turned into something of an Evil Empire.
“I don’t know if it’s biblical or Shakespearean,” he says. “They’re victims of their own ambition.”
The Mondavis’ plight strikes a bitter chord with Nossiter, as they went from a successful 1993 IPO to having Mondavi’s sons Michael and Timothy stepping down due in part to the billion-dollar acquisition of Robert Mondavi Corp. by the world’s largest winemaker, Constellation Brands Inc.
Nossiter shifts down a gear to put things in perspective.
“In politics, (power) has immediate and terrible ramifications,” he says. “On the other hand, we’re only talking about grape juice.”
