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'Mondovino': A documentary with distinctive character

For those of us who found Paul Giamatti's advice in "Sideways" (Pinot, good; Merlot, bad) to be the ultimate in oenophilia, "Mondovino" is a real eye-opener.

Filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter took three years and traveled to several continents to make this fascinating documentary about the effect globalization is having on small ancestral vineyards as well as its impact on less sophisticated palates that are becoming accustomed to wine that tastes like blackberry jam and can be opened before you get home from the grocery store.

ThinkFilm 'Mondovino' B The verdict: Vintage stuff. Director: Jonathan Nossiter Starring: Michael Broadbent, Hubert de Montille, Aime Guibert, Jonathan Nossiter Run time: 135 minutes Release date: May 6, 2005 Rating: PG-13 for brief pin-up nudity. On the web Official movie site [an error occurred while processing this directive]

So much for slow maturation and distinctive character. It was a very good year? More like, it was a very good month and a half.

If this sounds like snobbism, it is ... to a degree. But as the film shows, it's also a matter of McWining the world. To paraphrase Orson Welles' old Paul Masson wine commercial ("We will sell no wine before its time"), the prevailing mentality is becoming sell every wine any old time.

Fairly or not, "Mondovino" strongly implies the noble rot behind all this is Napa Valley's Mondavi family, who got into the wine business in the 1960s. Their more corporate approach to growing and marketing their product is in stark contrast to smaller vintners, many of them elderly, delightfully opinionated Europeans in Bordeaux, Sardinia or Tuscany, who speak of an ethical commitment to wine, of the weathered poetry of earth and sun, of winemaking as an art more than a trade.

The Mondavis, who come across as the essence of casual California cool, aren't dummies. Like a nouveau-riche American in a Henry James novel, they see the advantages of wedding their New World wealth and global clout to a distinguished, long-established Old World wine dynasty. When a feisty old farmer and a Communist mayor thwarted their attempts to buy into France's Languedoc region, the Mondavis simply moved on to Italy, where they easily found both land and lineage.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Except, as Nossiter presents them, the Mondavis come off as one-third of a vintage Axis of Evil. The others are Robert Parker and Michel Rolland.

Parker's publication, the Wine Advocate, uses a point system not unlike "American Idol's." His scores can make or break a wine. His old friend, Rolland, is a wine consultant with dozens of clients. Viewed through Nossiter's lens, he's a repugnant, oleaginous man with a Pavarotti beard and a Pavarotti mini-belly. Rolland spends his time being chauffeured from vineyard to vineyard, typically spending less than 10 minutes at each before proclaiming the same inevitable cure-all: "Micro-oxygenate!"

It becomes a running gag in the movie.

Individuality has gone out the window, sighs one elderly Frenchman. In contrast, a Mondavi-like distributor points out his company is after perfection, not excellence.

But what is perfect? Parker's tastes? Rolland's? Paul Giamatti's? In one are-we-really-seeing-this-on-camera moment, an employee at one of the more corporate-minded French vineyards points out her bosses sell both red and white wine. Pausing for effect, she asks: Do you see any red grapes here? (The implication being some "red" wine started out white before a little colorization.)

It quickly becomes clear "Mondovino" is about more than the wine business. The points Nossiter makes — about the uneven struggle between those who care about the wine first and profits second versus those who find more art in marketing than growing grapes — can be applied to other endeavors.

Like, oh, making movies. You could say Jerry Bruckheimer is the Mondavi of cinema and John Sayles is the little guy with more passion than acreage.

It's becoming a micro-oxygenated world, Nossiter is warning us. Buyer beware.