Don’t laugh, but I’ve gained some insight (or maybe reassurance) about wine from watching some of Samuel’s movies. Ratatouille is one of them that I will blog about someday, but the other more recent one is Shirley Temple’s Heidi. I said, don’t laugh. I leave it to the interested reader to learn what the movie is about, but regarding wine it’s the movie’s setting that interests me.
Even though it’s a Hollywood set it shows a turn of the 20th Century alpine Germany, and what struck me about the houses, clothing, storefronts, food, customs and so on is how unfamiliar and non-global those places (and all places) used to be. It doesn’t feel like that anymore; you have to travel far from the well-worn path to find it. Wine used to be the same way. Every village, every vigneron, might grow their own grape variety and certainly would make wine in their own individual style. People were isolated and the wines showed it. Not anymore.
I’m not reminiscing about bygone times, but I do believe the truly special wines are those that attempt to do no more than be from one vineyard and one person without a care for the global cacophony around them. That probably sounds old fashioned and provincial, and maybe it is, but that’s the only way to find the unfamiliar and the exciting.
