Pressure Drop

"Wine is dead," declares one vineyard owner gravely during Mondovino, Jonathan Nossiter's rather chilling documentary examination of the wine industry. Judging by the testimonies of an impressive swathe of vignernons, critics, corporate producers and importers assembled in the film, rumours pertaining to the demise of the grape may be somewhat exaggerated, but a boa constrictor-like squeeze is on.

A fascinating look at the Coca-Cola-isation of contemporary wine and the sinister corporate machinations responsible, Mondovino unravels a conspiracy worthy of Jon Ronson or that scruffy Canadian chap with the baseball cap. With planetary tastes being dictated to an incredible degree by wine critic Charles Parker at Spectator magazine, the pressure is on to smaller wine producers to conform or die in the marketplace. Of course, the current plonk canon favours the produce of Californian corporations and as they buy up smaller growers in France, Italy, Argentina and just about everywhere else, homogenised McWine is finding its way into supermarkets with shrinking shelf space for competitors.

It's join-the-dots globalisation, and wine devotes, liggers and even brown paper bag connoisseurs will have already noted the creepy Stepford Wife effects. Ever noticed how every bottle bursts forth with the same heavy vanilla scent? Or how the same wine seems to find its way into differently labelled bottles? Such uniformity is not surprising when one considers that most modern mass-produced wines seem to have been authored‚ by the same chap.

Michel Rolland is a flying wine doctor, visiting vineyards all over the world on behalf of his corporate clients. One of the most memorable characters in the film - smart, humorous and quick to laugh, particularly at his own jokes - M. Rolland's methodology is simple: micro-oxygenation and new oak barrels. Mr. Nossiter, a trained sommelier as well as a filmmaker, was eminently qualified to explain just how such processes translate in your glass when I caught up with him recently.

"Well, a wine is like a human being. It's all the irregularities and rough and smooth edges and things you can't legislate for that give character. This is very much my love-letter to wine. It's the most beautiful thing we can do with our natural resources and it gets you drunk, which is a bonus, but it's being destroyed.

"The micro-oxygenation process you mentioned, is a means of speeding up the ageing of the wine while removing all room for variation, taking out all the little anomalies which happen as part of the natural decomposition process. The ubiquitous vanilla taste and smell comes through the use of new oak barrels. In fact in the New World, they often mix oak chips into the barrels just to intensify the vanilla thing further. The thinking is 'hey, everybody likes vanilla, let's give them vanilla', but it masks everything about the wine's own character. It's a bit like fast-food. You get the hit, but it's not a satisfying one."

Interestingly, Mondovino keeps stumbling onto wine magnates with links to some of the most appalling regimes in recent history. Various corporate types can be heard cooing over the political innovations of Mussolini, Peron and Kissinger. Had Jonathan been aware of such dodgy associations prior to the two years spent making the film?

"No, that was accidental," he explains. "To be honest I couldn't believe my ears when I heard the words 'Mussolini made the trains run on time'. But it's not surprising. I mean none of the people in the documentary are bad people, but globalisation works very much along the same lines as a totalitarian regime. People are co-opted, often with the very best intentions. People like Charles Parker and Michel Rolland aren't actively conspiring with the industry. That's how it works. That's how a criminal like Bush gets elected and that's how people who love wine end up killing it."

Needless to say, the film has been a huge hit in France where it has inspired much debate about the selling-out of their national culture. Of course, not everyone is cheered by Mondovino's success.

"Well, Michel Rolland was furious," admits Jonathan, "and I was so sorry to hear it because I liked his company. The Californian wine industry is obviously very angry about the film. Lots of people are. But it needed to be acknowledged. Wine is now caught up in the culture wars and a global market and we're in real danger of losing thousands of years of our heritage."

Are things really so hopeless? Is wine actually dead, or does it, to paraphrase Peig, have one foot in the grave and the other hovering over?

"It's not dead, that's for sure," says Jonathan. "As you can see in the film there are lots of small producers and importers who are willing to stand and fight. But wine is losing its soul. Hopefully, there are enough people who love wine to make the difference. And as dwarfed as this resistance may seem beside the forces of globalisation, you have to remember that France resisted the Nazis with only 2% of the population."

So how can we consumers of plonk help out?

"It‚s very easy. Don't buy in supermarkets or big chains like Oddbins. You know, there's so much snobbery and bullshit attached to wine and we need to get over that. Find a local independent wine-seller and start talking to them and listening to what they have to say. That way, you'll not only get yourself involved in a way that ultimately benefits the small producers, but you'll also meet another human being. You can't lose."

Mondovino is released on December 10.