Drunk In Its Youth

Some months ago I picked up a copy of Jonathan Nossiter’s prosaic follow-up to his 2004 film Mondovino. The book was marked down in Duthie’s Books, a Kitsilano institution, during its final days clearance sale. The store closed, it seems due to its inability to compete with the larger chains like Chapters/Indigo. It was a victim of globalization, or as Nossiter prefers for its accuracy “global homogenization”.

I missed the boat on the initial reaction to Mondovino - I was not even legal drinking age when the film came out – so Nossiter’s use of the printed word as a soap box for rebutting his (film) critics seemed to overwhelm (like new oak) an overall sense of balance in his book. You’ll excuse my (excessive) use of parentheses, and snarky remarks since I just finished reading the book this morning. It’s not that Nossiter doesn’t have a legitimate point to make about troubling industry trends, and the dangers of all-powerful critics such as Robert Parker, but it’s the kind of smug shit-disturber attitude he uses to make these points that I find troubling. Case in point: the anecdote Nossiter uses to frame the narrative of all of Liquid Memory.

He begins the book by recounting a tale of a flawed bottle of wine he purchased at the Caves Legrand. The store refuses to return or refund the bottle, insisting there is nothing wrong with the wine, except there very much is, but only Nossiter knows the extent. He asserts, quite correctly, that the customer should be taken at their word in situations like this, after all the industry-wide return rate is well under the estimated rate of flawed bottles entering the market. However, after a roommate uses most of the flawed wine found in the fridge for cooking, Nossiter plays the childish prank of replenishing the bottle with a different wine and attempting to return it anyways. The saga continues with the store claiming the wine was sent back to the vigneron who said it was fine, a ridiculous idea since the wine if it were the genuine article would have been open for weeks at this point. As an epilogue to the book Nossiter returns to the Caves Legrand and by chance runs into the vigneron of the bottle in question who reveals he was never sent back the wine.

Nossiter uses the whole debacle as an object lesson in how our pride and our convictions interfere with our better judgment, especially when it comes to wine. He seems to think that the ends justify the means. That despite lying about the contents of the bottle, it was justified, since it proved that the store was wrong for insisting the wine was fine. But this kind of stunt, and the fact the the author never learned two wrongs don’t make a right, gives credence to critics of his film who accuse him of intense bias and manipulation of his footage to frame those he disagrees with. As much as he seems to have written the book as a defense of his film, he seems to have incriminated himself further as far as his character is concerned.

I don’t think Nossiter is wrong. The alarm he raises over the loss of culturally specific, terroir-based wines, echoes the loss of cultural specificity in general to the forces of globalization and should be heeded. I do think Nossiter, a filmaker first, sees the world much like a film, with protagonists and antagonists. He admits to as much in Liquid Memory, when he talks about “casting” for Mondovino, a documentary. You’re either with him or against him, and if you’re not with him get ready to be slandered. He rallies around his idols like Neal Rosenthal, Terry Theise and a trio of his favourite Burgundian vignerons. But Jancis Robinson, who has spoke-up against some powerful globalizing forces (read: Vincor and Cellared in Canada) on behalf of Canadians is dismissed for her fashion consciousness, or maybe just because she doesn’t wish to stick it to everyone else as much as he does.

Nossiter is the champion that advocates of real wine need even if he is not the one we want.