Onece again : Mondovino

Michael

I share some if not all the criticism about the MOVIE, and I find that in a way, just like Michael Moore, Nossiter does a disservice to the very cause they he is defending, by using the same manichean black and white view of reality that their enemy has adopted.

Nevertheless there is truth, garbled unfortunately, in Mondovino, yes in the world there is a trend to impoverish wine through heavy interventionism a la Rolland, there is endless speculation that drives up the price of trendy super-wines such as those made by the Ferragamo guy in the movie (utterly uninteresting stuff BTW), there are small producers that deserve much more attention, there is a pernicious market-fixing system driven by WS and Parker, etc.. Too bad this is all couched in a language of extremes that entirely obscures the issues.

I agree that picking Aime Guibert as representing the "little guys" is ludicrous, this guy built Daumas Gbuttac on his own industrial fortune; if Nossiter had any real familiarity with the wine world in France he would know how much contempt and ridicule is reserved for this man among wine enthusiasts and winemakers alike, in spite of the admirable quality of his whites in most years. His mailings are full of endless syrupy praise bestowed on Daumas Gbuttac wines by ... Aime Guibert himself; the man is clearly a megalomaniac with few parallels in the industry. I am not sure he comes off entirely well in the movie, at the end he seems driven by a consuming jealousy of the Mondavis.

As an italian I object to Rovani finding good in the work of Mussolini prior to the Hitler alliance. I suppose this kind of ignorance of history can be excused in a foreign wine critic. Prior to 1936, Mussolini took power, declared a dictatorship, made opposition parties illegal and resorted to torture and liquidate ine the enforcement of this law, including the famous liquidate of Matteotti. I end the list here.

I also would like to ask how much credibility can be lent to a forum such as PArker's, where all the disciples without exception rally behind Rovani in condemning this movie without any reserve. I would have expected some dissent, or are they also adopting Nossiter's style? ;-)

Cheers

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France