Mondovino's World of Whine

An entertaining lie, disguised as a documentary.

So there we were, striding down Broadway, late, as usual, this time for the official opening movie for the Sonoma Valley Film Festival. Mondovino purports to tell the story of how globalization threatens to debase the quality of wine across the world, and if the name Mondavi is somehow evoked by the name of this film, it is no coincidence. Bob Mondavi is cast as the international villain, a doddering old man out to take over the world in order to pass it on to his unworthy, pretentious sons. And all of this we learned before the movie, through word of mouth and various reviews.

So there we were, striding down Broadway, and we prepared to pass another doddering old man, in this instance Rene Di Rosa. We greeted him with a reminder that we'd met at his sprawling, Carneros art museum a year or so ago. He's refreshingly approachable, and is happy to tell anybody who asks what he was thinking when he started his art enterprise, or what life was like on the newspapers in the old days, whatever. We wished we'd had more time to talk on that first meeting it was so entertaining and revealing. And if you should ever go to the Di Rosa Art Preserve and espy an old man sitting on a bench with a contented look on his face, do not presume that it's an old pensioner who missed the bus home from the senior center field trip. It is probably Rene, who will be happy to talk to you, as he did to us.

I don't remember you, he said. I'm old, don't remember anything. Like where I parked my car.

He said all this with a hint of a smile, playing the helpless old guy, when, in fact, he knows better than most what's really going on.

He'd been on his way to the same film, someone didn't show up, and he was headed home. Before we could offer to help search for his vehicle, or talk him into going to the film anyway, he dismssed us, as if reading our thoughts.

You'd better get on to the movie, he said, shuffling away.

And what a movie it was. We enjoyed it immensely. If only it had something significant to say.

Mondovino displays the same approach to documentary film making as Michael Moore. It depends on the occasional fact and the try-to-please gullibility of people who open their time, homes and businesses to earnest-seeming creative types who then proceed to savage their generous hosts who probably thought that there might be a minimal level of fairness involved in their portrayals.

So we meet Michelle Roland, the French wine consultant who flies around the world and tells clients how to make the fad wines of the moment. He travels by limo, smokes alot and makes many grandiose pronouncements in a casually arrogant manner, punctuating them with a knowing chuckle. Filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter portrays Roland as the quintescence of the ugly American who's exterminating local traditions of winemaking everywhere since his malevolent influence is so powerful and pervasive.

If you've noted that Roland is French, you might wonder how he could be an ugly American. But he worked for the Mondavis, who are American, so there you have it. Much is also made of Robert Parker, the man who contrived an evaluation system for wine, which makes the judging of it slightly less subjective. Because Parker likes certain styles of wine, and those styles score well under the system he devised, those styles of wine tend to sell well to serious wine drinkers, who, of course, are the kinds of people most likely to pay attention to Robert Parker's grading system.

Since winemakers want to sell wine to serious drinkers for lots of money, they tend to want to make the kinds of wines those serious drinkers want to buy. So they hire Michelle Roland to tell them how to do that. Since Roland is friends with Parker, another American, like the Modavis, you have all the elements of yet another nefarious American plot to degrade all things wonderful in the world with our crass materialism.

The evil of this conspiracy is demonstrated in many ways. There are the kindly, eccentric old French winemakers who go on about tradition and the corruption of these Americans. The filmmaker delves into their pasts, eliciting the anecdotes of their bravery against the Nazis in the war and their help to the resistance. Coincidentally, we're sure, everyone who doesn't like the Mondavis and thinks they're evil seems to have fought the Nazis.

On the other hand, everyone who has a good word to say about the Mondavis, or even tries to provide a neutral perspective, is portrayed as a fascist. Literally. We really don't want to explore the complexities of prewar European politics, but we know the movie's implications are grossly oversimplified and criminally unfair. It's a masterpiece of so arranging individual facts to create what is, in effect, a damnable lie.

A perfect example? At one point, Nossiter interviews a Mondavi vineyard manager in the presence of a Mexican field worker. He asks the vineyard manager if he knows of any Mexican-owned wineries. He doesn't, and the impression is created of a grossly exploitative corporate lackey trying to avoid the fact that he's abusing innocents.

There are several wineries owned by Mexicans, and most of them are in Mexico. But two come to mind in the Napa/Sonoma region: Ceja and Robledo. And many other Mexicans who owned vineyard land cashed out over the years. They're really Americans, of course, but that's not the point. There are also many vineyard management companies owned by Mexican families, and most got their start just as the mute Mexican in the movie did: working in the fields for the prevailing wage which is sufficiently generous as to allow for the maintenance of life here and an extended family abroad. It's the American dream, actually, pawned off as a nightmare by Nossiter.

It's especially ironic to note that the all-powerful Mondavis had lost their empire before the movie showed here, somewhat undercutting its premise. But that's not important; their loss is further evidence of how badly they must have behaved.

Mondovino is despicable, but well worth viewing because it is so entertaining. Really. Seeing how wine people live, in various places, getting to hear their thoughts, and seeing it all distorted by a mean lens, contemptuous and contemptible in equal measure.

Afterward, we stopped at a reception at MacArthur Place, a lovely hotel down Broadway from the Sonoma Town Square. While imbibing at the bar we overheard a fellow filmgoer denounce the movie as so much excrement. But that was to be expected; we'd been inoculated against criticism by the man who introduced the film, a local wine consultant, who, one might suspect, might feel a smidgen of rivalry vis a vis Michelle Roland.

You'll find, he says, that people who are in the wine industry here don't like the film.

That would be because they're evil and corrupt, just as the film says, presumably. Either that, or they're sufficiently knowledgeable as to be aware of its inaccuracies.

Later, at dinner, we found ourselves seated next to the individual who denounced the film with such enthusiasm at the bar. Bruce Cohn, proprietor of the Glen Ellen B. R. Cohn winery, is an intense man who started life in Chicago and moved to Northern California with his family in the '50s. He has strong feelings about wine, which he will share, and many other things too.

He's in his mid-'50s, but has lived several lives in that time, it seems. He manages the Doobie Brothers, for instance, and has for 35 years; he has many stories about those old times in hippie San Francisco, and encounters with Bill Graham at the Fillmore Auditorium. We traveled in the same territory in those days, and had our own encounters with Bill Graham; but Bruce's must have been more interesting given that he was engaged in real business. But the most interesting revelation concerned Sol Zaentz, the producer of the English Patient, and a special honoree at the film festival. He managed Credence Clearwater Revival.

That struck us as hugely amusing; the English Patient appealed to an audience with rather refined sensibilities, while Credence was most relevant to us because it was the Hells Angels' favorite band, and attending one of their concerts could easily turn into a life threatening event.

Like the time we were dancing to their music at the Fillmore one night, and we stepped on somebody's hand. To our considerable dismay, we discovered that it was attached to a Hells Angel sitting on the floor. We looked down at the man who might well kill me and shuddered in horror. But that's another story.

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