Dr Vino's wine blog

There have been a couple of videos about the wine business circulating recently. They both have used a site called xtranormal, which allows users to select a scene, type text, chose camera angles and music to make a short video.

If you have been dying to make your own wine “movie,” now is your chance! Whip up a short video (about a minute) and paste the link in the comments here by next Monday. Then we can vote from short list of finalists next week. Check out the above video for instructions!

Besides the heapings of glory, the top vote getter will win a copy of my book, A Year of Wine! So just when you thought you might get some work done after Labor Day, surf on over and get started at xtranormal.com. (Btw, I found that the editing only worked in the Safari browser.)

For your time wasting needs today, we bring you a mildly amusing wine tasting scene with Vincent Price and Peter Lorre. It may be from 1972 and be based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story “The Cask of Amontillado.” But if you know for sure, hit the comments.

“I was a lawyer for 25 years; I’m different than everyone else in this room because I am not interested in the truth.”

So Ross Schwartz told the assembled group at the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers in Napa last week. Schwartz, formerly an entertainment lawyer based in Los Angeles, wrote the screenplay for the movie Bottle Shock, which stars Alan Rickman and recently appeared on DVD. It loosely depicts the events of the Paris tasting of 1976 when a Chateau Montelena Chardonnay and a Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon surprised the wine world by beating their French peers in a blind tasting. Schwartz elaborated on his goals for the screenplay, “When people walk out of the movie, I just want people to know who won the tasting and to want to buy a good bottle of wine.”

He said that he initially rebuffed the idea Read more…

What do you get when you cross Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible, the most recent Indiana Jones with a tale of fraud in fine wine? The apparent answer is: the movie version of The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine.

According to Variety, the superb wine book now has writer/director David Koepp on board the movie version. With those action movies under his belt, the odds of a chase scene in the movie now stand at 2:1. The main question is whether they will be running with bottles of 1787 Lafitte in hand.

When I previously posted about the book, I wondered if they would amplify the tiny role that women occupy in the book. And even before that, we were speculating about casting decisions. Add your new thoughts if you have any!

As with the Capote movies and two movie versions of the Paris Tasting, there were at one point last year two productions happening around this juicy tale of bling and fraud. This version seems to be inching closer to becoming reality.

Cara, who runs the green room (or whatever that waiting room is called) for Fox Business, asked me a great wine question when I was on the station in December. Instead of asking me for a specific wine that she might or might not be able to actually find, she asked me for on how to get the most out of wine. Nice! Context! You know I love that.

So I asked her whether she meant actually consuming wine or finding wine. She said both. So here’s what I said:

1. Spend a little extra on good stemware! You don’t have to break the bank since, undoubtedly, the glasses themselves will break at some point. But they can elevate modest wines and do fine wines the appropriate justice. Ravescroft has some good crystal stems starting at $10. And our house staple, as I’ve written before, is the Tritan Forte, which is “impact resistant” thanks to titanium infused in the lead-free crystal.

2. Find a good independent wine shop! You can read all you want about great sounding wines on blogs or in the paper but unless you can actually try the wines, your fun is severely limited. Work with an articulate member of the staff to find wines that you like.

You can read more about these suggestions–and more!–in my new book A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairing, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season. If Cara asked you for your top two general wine tips, what would you tell her?

Also, the first segment I did on Fox Business over the holidays has just unearthed from the great video vault somewhere (although the poor audio and video quality makes it look like I was in a witness relocation program). “Enjoy!”

Have you ever wanted to sip wine at a movie theater? Perhaps taste along with the show in Ratatouille or Sideways?

Well, wine geeks in Vancouver know how to go to the movies. (And I’m talking about Vancouver, Washington, not that other eno-gastro-hub further north). The Cinetopia offers a wall of Enomatic machines, those self-service wine machines that dispense one ounce at a time after a swipe of your card. Over 100 “world class” choices are there for your tasting prior to the movie in one ounce pours.

And if you feel a little parched during the show, bring your wine in and there’s a waiter who can serve you food during the film! For more details, check out the promotional video. And tell me which wine you’d have with popcorn. I’d opt for Champagne.

Could it really be true that David Beckham bought his wife Victoria (fka “Posh”) a winery in Napa for (only) “seven figures” for her recent birthday? So reported the Sun in the UK. Apparently the couple got into wine while he was playing for Real Madrid and, now living in California, may have taken the plunge. However, the fact that it remains unobserved in wine circles makes me skeptical that it really happened. But let’s talk about it anyway!

A columnist on MSNBC later reported on other reporting, looking for a motive:

“David feels like Victoria needs something to do other than shopping and going to parties,” a source told Full Disclosure. “He is hoping she will get into the wine business and settle into some kind of regular routine.”

Ouch! SFLuxe.com throws cold water on the idea of their buying a property, instead suggesting they bought into The Napa Valley Reserve. A $150,000 deposit buys the right to purchase wine, from a half a barrel to three barrels. Members can be as involved as they like, picking grapes off the vine (in stilettos?) or punching down the cap.

What should be the name of their wine? The Sun suggested Chateau Posh, describing it as thin bodied.

If they do buy a winery, they would be the latest celebrities to buy one. Brangelina recently signed a long-term rental in Provence and Johnny Depp bought Venssa Paradis a vineyard there as well.

A reader writes in: “I’m flipping through the channels and “The Jerk” (Steve Martin) is on… and there’s a scene with him pulling wine from dispensers. Lafite 66!”

Funny image indeed! (Note wine glass in top left corner.) Hit the comments with your caption!