The Mostly Serious History of Wine (2023) Movie Script
[upbeat music playing]
[Jim]
Wine is so deeply fascinating.
I love that every bottle
of wine is a piece of art
made by an artist
who had to count
on the weather.
As much as
we might revere a painter
like Caravaggio, for example,
his work
is famously hard to drink.
When done, right,
wine is also a giving art.
It's an industry
where the most learned people
assist folks like me
who know almost nothing.
[chuckles] Though, why would
anybody devote their lives
to something like that,
it's amazing.
So I made a documentary
about it, as anyone would.
I made this title sequence
in my garage.
Okay.
First question, why grapes?
Because they're the best.
You can make wine
out of tons of other stuff.
It's just that thanks
to sugar content and acidity,
no other fruit
can match grapes.
So all of those things
mean that you know, if--
if you went
to the engineers at MIand said, "We want you
to design a fruit
that would be perfect
for making wine,"
they would come up
with a grape.
Grapes are so good
for fermentation
that they do
most of the work themselves,
which is probably
how early people figured out
how to make
what we now call wine.
Now, this moment
happened long ago,
so long before writing
and we don't know
exactly when or where.
But the earliest
evidence suggests
that wine was being made
as long ago
as 6000 BCE,
in what is now
the country of Georgia.
They might only have intended to
keep grape juice from spoiling.
But by keeping fermented
grape juice away from oxygen,
they made wine
which is drinkable
rather than vinegar,
which is less so.
The most iconic feature of
the Georgian winemaking process
is, well, it's the wine,
but the second
most iconic is the kvevri.
[Jim] The kvevri is
a magnificent piece of pottery
made for fermenting wine.
Like people,
each has their own character.
To make wine in a kvevri,
you just pick your grapes,
smash them a bit,
and then plop the whole affair,
pips and all into the kvevri
and seal it up for six months.
That's old school.
That's, like, a Republic
of Georgia style of making wine
which they still use
to this day.
But it helps
control temperature
when you have something
underground, it can be covered.
But you see the clay pots
used above and underground now.
There's a story about
how people will sit
and sit with
their kvevris underground
and listen to the--
listen to the wine
and the wine is gonna tell you
when it's ready to be consumed.
And then it goes around
from person to person
whoever's making that wine,
"Let me fill my jug up."
You know, it's--
it's like a communal thing too,
which is cool.
You gotta--
you gotta understand
that wine's history
is as-- as--
pretty much as-- as--
it's 8000 years old.
I mean, that's, 6000 BC,
we've been
making wines as humans.
[Jim] Okay,
but what did it taste like?
Yeah, I think the answer
to that question is,
well, terrible is one thing,
but I think
it probably was concentrated
and it wasn't filtered
or fined.
So it was probably
pretty chunky,
you know,
and I'm sure it was dense.
And that's why I think
it's interesting with all--
with--
with winemaking techniques
that have been adapted
throughout time.
Having bubbles remain in it,
you know, for sparkling wine,
probably made shitty wine
taste better
because it's got bubbles in it,
you know.
[people cheering]
A lot of mistakes
happening, probably.
The situation of--
of finding fruit
and putting it somewhere
and forgetting about it.
There's always--
there's been trial and error,
I guess without--
within the history of the world.
And so someone took
the trial and they drank it.
Though we can only guess
what early wine tasted like,
signs do point to gross.
I don't think
anybody would dispute that.
I think
you're selling wine short.
Well, at least we can agree
that Neolithic people
did not have a strong grasp
of the spread of contaminants,
unlike modern people, who...
No, never mind.
Let's go to Egypt.
[mysterious music playing]
Grape growing hit Egypt
in about 3000 BCE
and the Egyptians
immediately decided
that wine was something
they should be buried with,
which is just about
the worst excuse I ever heard
for not opening
the last bottle in the house.
To friendship.
[all] To friendship.
-Cheers.
-Oh.
-[man] Oh, that's delightful.
-[woman] It is.
-[man] Fantastic notes.
-I think you're right.
It's hard to count
how quickly one bottle goes
-when you've got five.
-I know.
Yes, yes, uh, but the memories
will last forever.
Yeah.
Well, I thought
you'd be more generous
than a three-ounce pour,
but, you know.
[all chuckle]
I mean, like, you know,
we've been drinking
her out of house and home.
We don't want
to be poor guests,
but she gave us every bottle
except that one
over there.
-Oh, I see it.
-Yeah.
I mean, I could
have another, no lie.
-I mean, I could.
-I mean, I could drink
-unlimited wine.
-Yeah.
That-- that wine,
it's-- it's terrible.
We should totally crack
that open, like, right now.
No, no, I think
we should leave that alone.
It looks just perfect
where it is
right next to my golf clubs
and a picture of me
in the first grade.
Well, I mean, like,
it looks a little lonely
on your wine rack when
there's no other bottles there.
Just a little, you know.
I think it will look better
in my glass.
[all chuckle] Yeah.
-We're leaving it there.
-Oh.
-Oh.
-Okay.
Well, my glass
looks a little empty.
Last sip.
I took
all of mine already, so...
Listen, what's the big deal
about that bottle of wine, like?
-Exactly, what's the big deal?
-What's the big deal?
What is the big deal?
Come on, Jess,
what's the deal with the bottle?
-What's the deal?
-What is it?
-Tell us.
-I--
I can't have that wine
until I'm dead.
Couldn't we just replace it?
No, no, no,
I bought that one
for my death.
[Jim]
Around the same time, 3000 BCE,
vines were being cultivated
in Greece as well.
Though, wine didn't
really hit it big there
until 1000 BCE.
That happened
because of the advent
of something called a city.
I think when I think of Greeks,
that's what I think of.
It's like this, like,
what's painted on the vases,
you know, people laying
around with-- being fed grapes
and jugs and cherubs
carrying them around.
You know, that's what I think
of when I think of the Greeks.
Much like today,
early urbanites discovered
that their lives were too busy
to allow them to ferment
their own wine.
So they bought it
from vintners
and it soon became popular
with all strata
of Grecian society,
including
and most importantly, sailors
who took it with them all over
the Mediterranean and beyond.
Now, while the Greeks caught on
a little bit earlier
in terms of spreading wine,
we have the Romans to thank.
The Romans were to wine
what we Americans
are to cargo shorts.
Like the Greeks,
the Romans viewed wine
as being for everyone
from all strata of society,
from the lowest of the low
to Caesar Augustus himself.
Water at the time
was often disgusting,
but mixing a little wine in
made it slightly more palatable
and killed off
a few nasty things
living in the water as well.
You can just imagine
what city water
was like in 1000 BCE.
That's over 2500 years
before this,
the Trevi Fountain.
In early Rome, your best bet
for drinkable water was wine.
As a result,
the Romans took wine with them
everywhere they went,
they planted vineyards
all over the place.
And many of those
original Roman vineyards
still produce wine
to this day.
The only reason we know
about a lot of this stuff
is due to the efforts
of Pliny the Elder,
a Roman military commander.
Pliny spent his days working
faithfully for the empire.
But every minute
he had to himself,
he was either
studying or writing.
It is said that Pliny
ignored his need for sleep
because that time
could be used for writing.
[trumpet sounding]
He hated walking
because he couldn't walk
and write at the same time
and that he only made love
if his partner agreed
to be scrawled on
like a piece of parchment.
Granted,
I made that last part up.
But since I wrote it,
I think Pliny might have
begrudgingly approved.
Pliny wrote a lot.
But his only work
to survive through the ages
is his natural history
in which
he attempted to describe
the entire natural world.
Though he was not the world's
most assiduous fact-checker,
I think we can
forgive him
given that it's tough
to cross-reference sources
when only one person has ever
written about something.
Regardless, Pliny had a lot
to say about wines.
Good wines, bad wines.
Wine play.
Wine thoughts
with Pliny the Elder.
"It is the property of wine,
when drunk,
to cause
a feeling of warmth
in the interior
of the viscera,
and when poured
upon the exterior of the body
to be cool and refreshing."
Pliny also wrote
about Falernian wine,
which was a wine supposedly so
strong that it was flammable,
meaning it would have been
more than three times
as alcoholic
as today's wine.
The Romans were absolutely
bonkers for Falernian wine.
As the legend goes,
a humble farmer, Falernus,
had a meet-cute
with the Roman God
of viticulture, Liber.
The result
was Falernian wine.
Now we'll probably never know
what it tasted like,
but we can enjoy it as a great
early example of overhype.
Some people loved
Falernian wine,
-or at least claimed to.
-[demon] Yes!
[Jim] Some people
said it wasn't everything
-it was built up to be.
-[man spitting]
Pliny was an expert
on Falernian wine
and was able to taste,
whether he said so
out loud or not
when his friends
served him fake Falernian.
[glass shattering]
A century later,
the physician Galen
would doubt that
all the Falernian wine
could possibly be real
just based on quantity.
Real or fake, Falernian wine
later dwindled and disappeared.
But I think it's a great example
to keep in mind
because it's a story
about human beings
focusing on the aspects
of something
that don't matter that much.
Lots of people today
buy things
because of the brand name
without really knowing why.
I would love to be able
to afford to do that
because I want people
to think I'm cool.
But what really matters is
being more like Pliny the Elder.
Writing more,
pouring wine on yourself,
and maybe writing on people
if they're okay with it.
How do we get from early wine
to the point where, you know,
a little bit later on
Romans were dictating that
if you come across
a south-facing slope,
you need to plant
some grapes?
Okay. Yeah.
I like-- I like the fact
that you ask questions
-with three-hour answers.
-I apologize. [chuckles]
Um, so first of all,
wine and health.
Um, and by the way,
current research basically says
that wine probably
isn't good for you.
It does some things
that are good for you,
but the risk of liver damage
and/or alcoholism
outweigh those to the point
where if you were
to take someone and just say,
on a pure--
pure health basis,
should you start
drinking wine at age 30?
I think most doctors at this
point would say, "Probably not."
That said,
in the ancient world,
the old rule was
that water would kill you.
Um, and you know, one of the
questions I ask my students
is you've got
all the microclimates
and soil types
in the world in Asia,
why didn't they ever develop
a big wine industry?
And the answer
is they drank tea.
And the first step
in drinking tea
is boiling the water.
In Europe,
we didn't do that so much.
We made beer that way,
which is why beer has always
been considered a healthy drink.
So, going back to that
ancient, um, medical advice,
first, do no harm.
At the very least if you're
giving people soup or wine,
you're not introducing
new pathogens to them,
you're not making them worse.
At least before
Louis Pasteur
was a key part of--
of a healthy lifestyle.
And I'm still gonna argue
that a glass a day
is probably
not gonna do you much damage
and may help you
in a couple of ways.
Though they were still producing
wine in much the same way
that the Georgians
had 6000 years previous,
the Romans invented
something wholly new.
The wine barrel.
Or as kids today call it,
a rolly boy.
Well, as far as what
we were talking about earlier
with transportation,
barrel is much easier to move
than a pot that doesn't
have a proper bottom, right?
And that breaks really easily.
It's heavier, but it's more,
like, user-friendly.
Barrel does a couple
of things for wine.
One, it-- it's a--
it's a vessel that allows
for just enough oxygen transfer
to age a wine within it.
But also it doesn't make
the wine oxidize.
For me, first thing I think of
is adding a flavor.
Um, whether it be
a heavy toast or--
or-- or cinnamon or vanilla.
Um, it also is a vessel
to help mellow your wine
as well to soften the tannins
that would come
from the grape skins.
They last, you can use them
for a long time.
So, like, it's an economical way
of doing it too
when you have neutral barrel
because you can use it
for years and years.
I mean, there are people
who have their--
their, you know,
giant fermenting tanks
that are made of wood
that they've used since the,
you know, 1750s
that are still being used.
That's crazy, right?
That it's held up like that.
But I-- I think
of aging first before travel
because I-- I guess I live
in a modern world where,
you know, you can
put it in a tanker now.
[chuckles] You can put
your juice in a tanker
and ship it somewhere else.
[Jim] Wine had
a fantastic few 100 years
under the Roman Empire,
but with Rome's fall,
wine returned to being
a primarily local endeavor.
But for wine,
this wasn't twilight,
merely a passing cloud.
[classical violin music playing]
Benedict of Nursia
was born to Roman nobility,
but when he was 14,
he became disgusted with Rome
and he left
to found a monastery.
Before he died,
he wrote out a set of rules
for monks to follow,
including that each monk
should be allowed one hemina
or about 270 milliliters,
or two stingy glasses per day.
This helped further democratize
wine in the medieval world.
The only problem was
it was still gross.
[monk spitting]
And worse,
the medieval poor were faced
with the prospect of drinking
wine stored in animal hides,
which would have imparted
all manner of flavors,
if not bacteria.
Imagine wine that's been
left outside for eight months
and then decanted
in a shoe.
Then again, some people I trust
don't seem to mind.
You're talking about,
like, a real wineskin.
[Jim] It's just--
they cut it off the animal.
-Yeah.
-Tie the ends.
Let's do it, let's do it.
I'm here for that.
Whether in a shoe or not
wine was ready
and a big break came
with the rise
of the medieval middle class.
The middle class
were a new breed.
[man grunts]
They formed
something called guilds
which were a little bit
like early corporations,
including all
the good and bad things
about modern corporations.
By joining a guild
and displaying its crest,
you showed
potential customers
that you weren't
just any old idiot.
You were a professional.
Guilds also gave rise
to a merchant class.
They weren't poor
and while they weren't nobility,
they were definitely rich
and they definitely wanted wine.
At the same time,
population and methods
of transportation were growing,
which had a similar effect
on the feudal system
that the internet,
among other factors,
had on locally owned
retail stores.
The upshot of all this
though for the wine trade
was increased demand
and easier transport
which led to lots more business.
But it also meant
that regions had to compete
on the basis of things
like quality
in addition to price.
And because of that competition
for the first time,
common people
had a chance of sampling wine
that did not taste
like old shoe.
Around this time,
there was one city that
had everything it needed
to be a wine production
powerhouse...
except for a thriving market.
And that city was in a duchy
called Aquitaine.
The big boss of Aquitaine
was Duchess Eleanor,
who was also married
to Louis VIII of France.
And thus,
in addition to being a Duchess,
she was Queen of France,
but she got her marriage
to Louis VIII annulled
and married
Henry Plantagenet instead.
Henry went on
to become King of England.
Aquitaine became
an English territory.
And all of a sudden
our hero city got itself a huge,
new English market
for its wine.
But Eleanor's ex-husband,
Louis VIII,
still King of France,
invaded Aquitaine
intending to fight
every last person there
into the sea.
Louis was thwarted
when our heroic city
stopped the assault
of the French.
The English royalty
were understandably thrilled.
As a result,
our city became
the go-to wine city
for England and the world.
What was that city
that stood strong
against the invading
French bast--
It was Bordeaux.
Which is in France.
Because
of the Hundred Years' War,
which was fought
for over 115 years.
But-- but-- but this--
never mind.
Look, around the same time,
just a few 100 miles away,
near the city of Dijon
lived an extremely devout
group of monks
known as the Cistercians.
[religious music playing]
[Jim] Though they lived
by the same rules
set forth by Saint Benedict,
whom we mentioned previously,
the Cistercians
positively laughed
at their Benedictine
contemporaries.
Those Benedictines
with their sinful indulgences,
like eating and talking.
-Ha, savages.
-Oh?
[Jim] Except the Cistercians
much more closely observed
a vow of silence
than the Benedictines.
So they probably
only laughed on the inside.
After the fall
of the Roman Empire,
really the only group
of people in Europe
who were organized,
economically viable,
and literate...
was the church.
They had a network
that allowed them
to travel all over Europe
and stay safely
in a church every night.
Nobody else had that.
In fact, if you were
outside the walls
of most medieval cities
at night,
you were beyond the law,
which is how we came up
with the term outlaw.
So they were following
the Roman recipes
on how to make wine.
Where this story
gets complicated
is the church
started to sell indulgences.
[Jim]
So you could be a sinner.
But if you gave
a gift to the church,
you could be absolved
of some of your sins
or at least reduce the amount
of time you spent in purgatory
before you went to heaven.
This seemed like
a pretty good idea
to many wealthy people.
But one of the things
they would do
is they would give vineyards
to the church
because A,
vineyards were valuable.
But B, the church always had
the best winemaker in the region
because he's read
the books.
Everybody else is making wine
the way we used to make it.
"I don't know, my grandpa
used to do it this way,"
but the church
always had the books.
And what it meant
was they were getting vineyards
in different parts
of the region,
often gifts
in return for indulgences
and then
they were making the wines
and as they made the wines,
each wine was made
exactly to the same recipe.
And what they discovered is...
Holy Moly,
the wines taste different,
that wine tastes
different from this wine
even though we made it
exactly the same way.
So that gave birth
to this whole idea of terroir.
[Jim] Terroir is a bit
of a nebulous thing,
which is probably why
the term is so popular
because it's hard
to misapply.
But basically,
it means the way
that a wine represents
its physical place.
[upbeat music playing]
You know,
when you are feeling
a little bit
unsure of yourself
and you wanna hide
from the world.
-That's foxy.
-[buzzer buzzes]
When you look across the bar
and you see someone
drinking wine...
It's, like, squirrely
where you're like,
"Oh, I can't figure out
how I feel about this person,"
but you're a little
more sassy with it.
And you're like,
"If I drink enough wine,
-that person will look better."
-[buzzer buzzes]
It's a little bit gamey.
Some people like it.
Some folks don't.
-But they call it foxy.
-[buzzer dings]
You know, when you misspeak,
uh, in a conversation
and you know
that everybody heard it
but they're all acting
like, "No--
no-- no, nothing's wrong"
but you know that they're lying,
-that's mouth feel.
-[buzzer buzzes]
Mouth feel is, like,
what animals use to sense
whether
they like others or not.
-It happens in the mouth.
-[buzzer buzzes]
Mouth feel is the texture
of the liquid in your mouth.
The viscosity,
how it feels against the tongue
-and the cheeks.
-[buzzer dings]
That's what happens, um,
when you're in a lab
and you accidentally
revive dinosaurs.
When you go to the dog park
and, uh,
you notice that it says,
"No small dogs allowed,"
but you have
the smallest dog...
-that's terroir.
-[buzzer buzzes]
Terroir is
this feeling of fear
that comes over you
when you don't know
the answer to something
-that you should know.
-[buzzer buzzes]
Occasionally
when the sun, like, shoots off,
-like, radioactive energy.
-[buzzer buzzes]
Tannins are that
tingly sensation on the tongue.
When you know
that something is amiss.
The more tannins you have,
the higher quality the leather.
[buzzer buzzes]
-[Jim] You wanna [indistinct]?
-No, that-- that's me. No.
I don't wanna [indistinct].
[all laugh]
It seems obvious now,
but at the time,
it was
a breakthrough discovery
that certain grapes
and certain places
are a natural match
for one another.
And we have the Cistercians
to thank for that.
The work of the Cistercian
as well as other groups
like the Benedictines,
concentrated wine's development
into the major
wine-growing regions
we know in France today.
There are quite
a few regions,
sub-regions, and cru sites,
but perhaps the most famous
are Champagne,
Burgundy, Beaujolais,
the Rhone Valley,
Bordeaux and the Loire Valley
and Alsace and Languedoc
and Provence.
There are a lot.
The Celts might have been
growing wine in France
before the Romans
barged in.
But as discussed,
the Romans really went ham.
You'll hear a lot of people
mention Burgundy
as one of the world's
fanciest wine regions.
Whereas its southern neighbor,
Beaujolais is,
so they say,
more approachable.
As we heard, Jeanine say...
I know that this wine
comes from Burgundy.
If it's red,
it's probably Pinot.
[Jim] This is the case,
thanks to a 14th-century Duke
named Philip the Bold.
Philip became
the Duke of Burgundy
because when he was 14,
he helped his father,
King John II, or John the Good,
fight the English
at the Battle of Poitiers,
which they lost.
But Phillip apparently
was bold about it.
I'm sure it was a great comfort
to the common folk
who lost family members
at the battle
to hear that the king's
14-year-old son was bold.
Philip and his dad were
both captured during the battle
and were kept in custody
until they were released
by a treaty in 1360.
Philip became
the Duke of Burgundy in 1363.
As Duke of Burgundy,
in addition
to the usual ducal duties
of killing the English
or the Flemish
or marrying
a Flemish countess,
Philip took
a lot of care and pride
in his region's wine
made from Pinot Noir.
Pinot Noir then, as now,
was hard to grow,
much harder than say, Gamay.
I assume
you've seen Sideways
and heard
Paul Giamatti deliver
an "Alas, poor Yorick-esque"
monologue on the subject,
so you know
how Pinot Noir people can get.
Philip noted that
many of the wine growers
under his ducal shadow
were growing Gamay grapes
rather than Pinot Noir.
And we presume he feared
this would hurt his wines'
and by extension,
his Duchy's reputation.
There is reason to believe
that farmers
were incentivized to plant Gamay
because they were struggling
for manpower
due to the black plague killing
a third of people in the world.
That stands to reason.
But there's not really
a time ever
when farmers don't benefit
from easier,
higher-yield crops.
Was Philip the Bold right
to banish Gamay from Burgundy?
It's easy to imagine a grower's
family suffering undue hardship,
thanks to an out-of-touch Duke
issuing edicts
out of his back office.
At the same time,
one can also easily imagine
Burgundy's competitors saying,
"What, Burgundy,
that old swill?
They don't make it
like they used to."
Whatever his reasoning,
Duke Phillip decreed
that Gamay was vile
and demanded it be ripped
from the earth.
If they wanted to grow Gamay
south in Beaujolais,
so be it.
They did
and they still do to this day.
Which should you drink?
Ask your local wine expert.
But the answer is both,
responsibly, but both.
But it wasn't just France
on the wine scene at the time.
The Germans
were beginning to have success
despite their colder climate.
In the 15th century,
a little grape
known as Riesling appeared.
[Jim]
Because Riesling produced wines
with relatively high acidity,
the wines both tasted fresher
and lasted longer
without spoiling.
But while the Cistercians
introduced and developed wines
based on a vine's location
down to the foot,
the Germans began working
on wines picked late
in the harvest,
differentiating
based on the day
and sometimes even picking
certain grapes from a bunch
and leaving others
to mature.
That's one of the coolest things
to me in the world.
Like, who did that one day?
They're like, "Oh, damn it,
all of our grapes
are covered in mold.
Let's-- let's press it
and see what happens."
You know what I mean?
Like, that-- somebody did that.
And now this-- some of the most
expensive wines in the world
are made from moldy grapes.
[imitates explosion]
Their labeling is a little--
it's slightly different
from what we know
as traditional overall labels
because there's always,
like, a vineyard site
and a town involved.
A quality level.
So if you don't know
those quality levels,
you don't know how much sugar
you're walking into.
Yes, so I would say
German labels
are probably the most
complicated labels to read.
Um, and then France after that.
With, like, Germany,
you got Cabernet,
you've got Auslese,
Beerenauslese,
you have the-- the vineyard,
you have the cru site,
and you're just like...
"Is this Riesling
gonna go with my salad?"
Like, that's all
I want to know.
Today, the Germans
still produce delicious,
high-quality
late-harvest wine,
as well as
everyday table wine.
But with all
that great wine around,
why even produce
everyday table wine?
Simple, because
Americans will drink it.
[Jim] By the 17th century,
a nobleman from Bordeaux,
Arnaud III de Pontac,
Monsieur de Pontac,
if you're nasty,
realized three things.
First, that as
the Cistercians had proven,
some wines
were better than others
based on their precise
geographical location.
Second, that according
to him, anyway,
his Haut-Brion wines
were one of those special wines.
And third,
that taverns across Europe
sold almost all wine
by slobbing it together
in a huge barrel.
So no one knew if they were
drinking his amazing Haut-Brion
or some rot gut pigswill
made five meters away.
So what did de Pontac do?
Simple.
He doubled the price
of his wine
and then insisted
it was worth it.
In short,
he invented wine marketing.
How much
of the wine trade is marketing?
Um...
I'm gonna say that 98% of it.
If there is ever a story
about marketing, it's champagne.
You grow grapes where
it's too cool to get them ripe.
And so you add
extra sugar
hoping that
you'll make up the difference
and you get bubbles
and you think, "Oh, okay,
I've got lemons,
I'm gonna make lemonade."
And then you make it
a wine of celebration.
They were brilliant at this
and the stuff's delicious.
So who can complain?
[Jim] How much
of the wine trade is marketing?
Hmm.
I feel like this is, like,
something for me to poo-poo.
Um... [sighs]
People-- people come in,
they're like,
"I love the label
of this wine"
and I'm like,
"That's why it's on there."
Like it's--
it's because it's pleasing
and it makes you want to go
like, "I like this label.
I will buy this wine."
Um, and that's marketing, right?
Um, I don't think
that necessarily means
that it's a bad wine,
um, at all.
I think that-- that
sometimes people just, like,
want a quirky head
on there that's exploding
or whatever it is.
One, when you're a big company
and you have a recognizable
label that everyone knows,
then you're gonna be
very successful.
And if you screw that,
if you move-- change it around,
sometimes people,
you know, react poorly to it.
When you're talking about,
like, simplistic,
small-production wines,
I think that word of mouth,
honestly, social media
has done a lot
for small-production wines.
Um, and--
and good websites...
do a lot for--
for small production wines.
So--
and that's marketing, right?
[Jim]
Well, speaking of stories,
I'm thinking of,
uh, Haut-Brion,
you know, they're that--
according to my research anyway,
they were kind of the first,
uh, place to do that.
To say, "My wine
is better than their wine
because my vineyard
is a meter away from theirs."
We wouldn't have--
we wouldn't have [indistinct]
if it didn't--
if it wasn't for that, right?
If it wasn't for people
saying, like,
"I'm the best,"
and then someone else
was like, "Sure."
Under table money,
you know, like,
we wouldn't have those things,
which is,
I mean, those wines
are thousands, Haut-Brion,
like, thousands of dollars
for a bottle of wine.
That's, is it-- is it amazing?
Absolutely, change your life.
But, like...
does it exist because 200 years
or 100 and something years ago,
someone was like,
"This is the place."
But also...
it's that whole, like,
I have a wall around my space.
"This is my space.
It is the best space
because my wall is here.
I know-- I know your space
is connected to my wall,
but it sucks because
you're not in within my wall.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's-- that's how it--
that's how it--
that's how it works.
[Jim] How much
of the wine trade is marketing?
Oh.
Hmm, uh...
What seems to be a bigger number
is not really
because I--
I am a big believer in,
if you see
a commercial for it,
then I'm probably
not drinking it.
And when you think about
your smaller families,
um, they don't have market--
they don't have
marketing budgets,
and that's usually
who I want.
Um, so from
the large perspective
of the wine industry,
marketing is probably--
God, I'd say 65% of everything,
you know,
exposure is a big deal.
Especially for a product
that most people
don't understand.
You know,
if you're exposed to it
and it's flashy and, you know,
you-- you see all the colors
or whatever you see,
then you're probably
more amped to go buy it
and to get excited about it.
Um, but I-- I--
everyone's different,
and I get more excited about
the folks that don't have
a budget for marketing.
That get their marketing
from word of mouth,
you know,
because your product's so good
and made so impressively that,
you know, it's gonna sell out.
But, you know, yeah,
you think about, like,
Madame Clicquot
and she's the queen of--
if it wasn't for her,
there would be
no marketing, period.
Like no way of knowing
about the products in hand
and-- and making it.
I guess she's the queen
of celebration.
Really, so yeah.
[Jim] But you know,
to say that something
is a grocery store wine.
That's-- that's an insult.
It is, it is.
And I understand
what people mean by that,
you know, just because
you see it in a grocery store
doesn't mean that
it's-- it's-- it's inferior.
You know, there's a couple of
things that we've sold here
that, you know,
just happen to...
get a good name for itself.
And so if I say if you made it
to the supermarket
and I sold your wine,
then that's a good-ass wine.
You know, like, that's it,
that wine was fantastic.
But once we figured that out,
we're just like,
"Okay, that-- that-- that train
has been gone now, so."
[Jim] As the experts
have each mentioned,
Madame Clicquot
was another pioneer
in wine marketing.
When her husband,
Francois, died in 1805,
she took over
the family business
and invented the concept
of champagne out of nothing.
She was not yet
30 years old at the time.
Now, sure,
de Pontac might have been
a great early
marketer of Obrien,
but he didn't invent red wine.
Madam Clicquot created
a business for her product
with nothing more than her wit
and the sheer force of her will.
When we drink champagne today,
we are taking part
in the legacy
of a serious badass.
Stepping back a bit
from Madame Clicquot
to the 17th century though.
European explorers
were discovering the new world,
which was a surprise
to the people
already living there.
Those explorers
brought grapes with them,
much as the Romans had done
thousands of years before.
They planted
and cultivated grapes
north into what is now
the United States,
as well as south into Argentina,
Chile, Mexico.
Honestly, just about everywhere.
Colonists were often commanded
to plant vineyards,
but at least in the US,
there was a small problem.
The wine that they produced
did not taste good.
It tasted foxy.
Yeah, well, first of all,
there's a--
there's even an argument
about what foxiness is,
but it's a pretty simple concept
and it goes back--
let's go back
to Thomas Jefferson.
Thomas Jefferson
tried desperately
to grow grapes in Virginia.
Um, the easiest way
to explain it
is that they taste a little bit
like Concord Grape Juice.
Concord Grape Juice is a--
Concord
is a native American grape.
And that smell is in some--
it-- it is related
to the kinds of grapes
that are native
to the United States.
And some people
call it foxy.
And some people say, "Well,
that's not exactly what it is,
but it is that character
that makes those wines
taste different.
And you know,
there-- there are wines
made from Native American grapes
that are pretty darn successful.
Manischewitz.
That's a Concord wine.
Uh, and if you want to know
what early wines
in America tasted like,
they were probably
drier than that
because it's actually
pretty sophisticated
to make a wine that has
that residual sweetness in it
without letting it referment.
That's basically
what they were drinking
in the good old days.
So if-- if you wanna drink
what Thomas Jefferson
was drinking at Monticello,
grab a bottle
of Manischewitz and have at it.
[Jim] What does
a foxy wine taste like?
[indistinct] question.
Foxy?
[Jim]
What does a fox taste like?
I have a really
hard time with that
because I also wonder
the same thing, like,
what does a mouse taste like?
Hairy? I don't know.
Um, that's what
it tastes like to me,
but some people like that.
Some people like that earthy,
musty, mousy, foxy, sweaty,
horse sweat kind of thing,
you know?
Um, a-- a fox,
I think-- um...
I think they probably
taste like a...
I don't even know.
We have foxes
in our neighborhood.
They look so cool in pictures,
and then you see them
in real life
and you're like,
"That thing's ugly."
[chuckles] It's gross.
The American colonists
kept at it
until downy mildew
and then the American Civil War
demolished the wine trade.
But in California,
much as today,
things were different.
[Jim] Jean-Louis Vignes
was making and selling wine
in California in the 1840s.
And the gold rush
later that decade
also had a profound effect
on the demand for wine.
Since unlike gold, the miners
could actually find wine.
By the end of the 19th century,
Californian wines
were flowing like...
well, they were flowing,
which is good,
they would be needed.
[upbeat music]
Also in the mid-19th century,
a man named James Busby,
along with others,
imported grape vines
to Australia
which was particularly difficult
because it was Australia.
Australia
is a gigantic island
made primarily
of deadly spiders,
which is why,
until recently,
Australian wine production
has been focused
on stronger ports
and sherries
because Australians need to
drink a little courage
just to go outside.
But today Australia's
wine production spans
all kinds of wines,
which is enjoyed by
all kinds of deadly spiders.
Everything was changing
in the middle 17th century.
Descartes was extolling
the virtues of reason.
Isaac Newton published
his Principia,
including the laws of motion.
And that verve for deliberation
came also to winemaking.
And with it some new techniques
for storing wine
with corks and bottles
and a creepy old man.
As all this was happening,
a man named Antoine Lavoisier
did something
absolutely brilliant.
He married his wife
Mary Anne Lavoisier.
Together, they went on
an unbelievable tear
through science,
shaping the way that we look at
the world to this day.
Most importantly
for our story though,
the Lavoisiers
brought science to wine.
Their contributions
would be built on
by people like Adamo Fabbroni
and later Louis Pasteur.
Pasteur showed that whatever
is wrong or right with a wine,
the reasons are likely down
to living things called germs.
Fermentation, germs.
Wine going sour, germs.
That weird smell in the parlor,
parlor germs.
Pasteur loved germs.
He loved them so much,
he named his son Germs.
Okay, that's not true.
But he did realize that
germs were responsible
for a lot of
disease and decay,
which led him to try heating
liquids above a temperature
that the germs could tolerate,
thus killing them off.
This process is known today
as heating stuff up,
but it's also known
as pasteurization.
And you've probably seen
the word pasteurized
if you've ever seen milk.
Though wine
isn't typically pasteurized,
Pasteur's work explained
the fermentation process
and helped make better wine,
that lasted longer.
And with the use
of more modern bottles and corks
by the middle 19th century,
wine really took off.
I mean,
it was only 400 years ago
that we figured out how to use,
how to use--
how to manufacture corks.
And how to actually--
It's not just manufacturing
corks and doing it consistently
because they did know how to--
the properties of cork
and it was good properties.
But actually manufacturing
the bottles,
the same shape every time
because you have to have
standard corks
and standard bottles.
That was a huge technological
leap forward back then.
[Jim] But also
because of these advances,
it became possible
to age wine.
It allows, I think, for a wine
to show its true potential
or fall apart
and be destroyed very easily.
I think it's a delicate
balance with aging.
[Jim]
But trouble was fermenting.
A shitty insect
called Phylloxera
was destroying
European vine roots.
-[insect buzzing]
-Thankfully though,
American vine roots were
resistant to pests.
Grafting a vine of one grape
onto the root of another
grows the top
of the vine's grapes,
not the roots grapes.
The dying European roots
were dug up,
American ones planted,
European vines grafted
onto them,
European wine was saved.
-Easy.
-[crowd cheering]
Except, of course,
it wasn't nearly that easy.
[crowd booing]
It took decades of research
and development
to match roots to soil.
And in many cases, the solution
was as bad as the problem.
But European wineries
survived
just in time for many of them
to be destroyed
during World War I.
After World War I
and World War II,
lots of things were different.
In parts of the world,
water was cleaner.
It was no longer necessary
to drink wine or beer
merely because
they were the safest beverages.
The popularity
of spirits and cocktails
also affected
wine's popularity.
But at the same time,
wine was experiencing
a big uptick in quality.
People valued it more.
New laws and regulations emerged
to categorize and classify wine.
The only problem is that
in order to classify something,
you need to come up
with some guiding principles.
But what happens
if nobody can agree
what those are?
In Italy, the Denominazione
di Origine Controllata or DOC
decided to freeze
the development of Italian wine
as it was at the time
rather than letting
wine producers
continue to employ
new techniques
coming to the fore.
To which some of those Italian
wine producers responded,
and I quote, "Vaffanculo!"
[Jim] Some winemakers,
particularly the Tuscan region,
struck out on their own
outside the classifications
and made outstanding wines
which are legendary today.
That's great for them,
but it made
the DOC look a little bit dumb.
The battle between the DOC
and the rogue winemakers
got sorted out
to some degree
with an expansion
of Italian wine classification
in the 1990s.
But the result,
and this is true of nearly
all classification systems,
is pretty confusing.
A guy could spend a lifetime
laboriously purchasing
one wine after another,
opening it,
sharing it with friends,
left to his own
devices to decide
whether he likes it or not.
Oof, you know, if I must.
To be fair
to the classification systems,
even if the early days
were rocky,
and even if the resulting system
is confusing,
someone's got to
keep their eye on things.
You know, if I grew grapes
and I sold them for a profit,
I'd be trying to think of ways
I could grow more grapes
for more profit.
Anyone would.
The problem is that
maximizing production
doesn't necessarily
maximize quality.
If quality were to slip,
overall interest in wine
would too,
everyone could suffer.
This conflict goes on today
and presumably will forever
and is getting weirder
all the time.
-[Jim] Is wine too complicated?
-No.
For me? Or for--
for that guy?
I think we-- I think we try
to make it too complicated.
It doesn't have to be
complicated.
It is complicated,
and it can be,
there's a rabbit hole,
there's--
there's stacks and stacks
and stacks of books
that you can read about it.
But I think
at the end of the day,
do you like it?
The end.
You know, we've taken the time
to educate ourselves,
not because it's our duty,
but because
I want to learn more.
So if I'm gonna learn more,
I'm gonna make sure
that I share it more.
And that's
the great part about wine
is there's
still so much learning
that can happen.
Nobody says when--
when Lady Gaga releases her--
her new song, nobody says,
"You know, if you took a class
in music appreciation,
you would get
so much more out of this song."
It's just not what happens,
but somehow we think
people need to get educated
and the truth is they don't,
they need to
have fun with wine.
And once you start having fun
with wine,
you'll be fine.
You know,
wine is stigmatized
and it has been for,
well, a long time.
It certainly is now.
And, um...
I-- I think--
I think there's room
to take it
a little less seriously.
[friend] Okay. Okay.
Just-- if you could just,
maybe a little bit more relaxed.
Like if you-- it's just, like,
the end of the day,
you're taking
your shoes off.
Yeah, shoes.
Cuddled up
with my robe and cats.
[chuckles] I'm so relaxed.
[friend] What's going on
with your eye there?
My eye?
Oh, is it? I'm sorry.
Uh... [laughs]
-[friend] [indistinct]
-I-- I'm-- I'm relaxed.
[laughs maniacally]
So relaxed.
So, yeah, relaxed.
-[friend] Shake it all out.
-Mm-hmm.
-[friend] Shake it.
-Yeah.
[friend]
Maybe a little more.
Uh, I'm good.
[friend]
And maybe the hands?
Oh, sorry, sorry.
It's a nervous...
-[friend] Aha!
-Oh, you got me.
[Jim] I think we can
understand why our experts
would say that
wine isn't too complicated
and they're right that
the only thing that matters
is if you like it.
But if you're someone
who wants to get into it
a little bit more,
it can be frustrating.
Think of it like getting into
a new band.
How do you do that?
Well, you hear one song
that you like
and then you spread out
through
that artist's catalog
and then you look for
other similar artists
and then your feed fills up
with songs
you can't bear to listen to
because the algorithm
is a disease.
Now, imagine
if your city, state,
and federal governments
all put controls
on what bands
were available at what time
with overlapping
and conflicting laws
all over the place.
As soon as you found
one song you like,
you'd never see it again.
That's how wine feels
to me sometimes.
Hello.
Hi, I'm the owner
of this fine wine shop.
Can I help you
find anything?
I love a good cab.
-Oh, of course.
-I was looking for that--
Was there anything specific
that you're looking for?
Yeah. As long as
it's a cabernet and drinkable,
I'll have it.
Oh, no, no, no, no,
I really--
I'm just gonna rip
this band-aid right off.
-What?
-Uh, cabernet doesn't exist.
The whole grape?
I'm telling you,
I will be honest with you.
I assure you,
cabernets are not a real thing.
You know what?
I heard rumors of that
on Reddit.
What? How did I not know?
I mean, I always said it--
Big Wine
doesn't want you to know.
Well, what about this?
It's empty.
So that's more, uh,
of our, uh, air wine.
[Jim]
How did it get this way?
Well, my friends,
let me tell you about
a little thing called
prohibition.
In 1920,
after passing the 18th Amendment
and the Volstead Act,
the US went completely dry.
To this day,
the debate rages over
whether it was a good idea
and whether
the effects were positive
but it wasn't
and they weren't.
Now, given that I'm neither
a physician nor an economist,
I am not qualified to make
the following two assertions.
-But since I'm a comedy writer--
-[program interruption beeping]
If health
is your primary concern,
you should avoid alcohol
and sugar and sitting down.
-[explosion booms]
-[woman cries out]
Now having said that,
please know
if you're currently sitting down
enjoying sugar and alcohol,
you are my people
and I love you.
Banning something for which
there is still supply and demand
will probably go wrong.
Because booze
is relatively easily made,
the US had a very hard time
controlling the supply
of alcohol during prohibition.
Imagine
if they tried to ban something,
a plant, for example,
that grows
right out of the ground
almost anywhere and requires
very little post-processing.
I mean, if you can, imagine.
[woman shouting] Yay!
[Jim]
The 21st Amendment repealed
the 18th Amendment
and ended prohibition.
Before prohibition,
there was such a thing
as tied houses which were bars,
owned and operated
by the Big US Brewers.
Imagine the way the US suburbs
are carpeted today
with fast food restaurants
all clustered together
and you'll have some idea
of how common
and huddled together
the tied houses used to be.
We didn't want to go back
to the tied houses system.
So after prohibition,
we came up with something else.
The three-tier system.
Importers slash producers,
distributors and retailers.
In some states,
the state government operates
as some of the tiers,
and counties can also have
their own sale
and distribution laws.
Distributors territories
sometimes include
multiple counties
or parts of counties.
On the other hand,
to be fair to the folks
who came up with this system
almost 100 years ago,
well, it was almost
100 years ago.
Things are different now.
A great problem
that we have today is that
all wine is pretty good.
Because of food safety standards
and equipment advances,
the most modestly priced wines
year-round
are on par with the best
anyone ever drank
just a few generations ago.
I had a hard time
getting a handle
on what aging wine
did for the taste.
Of course, as always,
your local wine expert
can help you here.
But there's also a wine region
that has made it very simple,
Rioja.
Rioja's four color-coded
classification levels
make it easy to put together
a group of bottles
by the same maker,
from the same region,
using roughly
the same techniques.
So the effect of aging
becomes more clear.
I think that, you know,
one of the benefits
of understanding
the Spanish system,
and even
at its most basic level,
the Rioja system,
is that it's very easy,
if you know
those three levels,
to know that your wine
has been aged in oak.
And has also been required
to have been aged in the bottle
for a period of time.
[Jim] So if you, like me,
often taste red wine and think,
"Yes, that's red wine,"
lining up a few bottles
like this is a great way
to get a foothold
in being able to taste aging.
Let's dig a little bit deeper
into Rioja's history.
We've mentioned
the early Mediterranean peoples
like the Greeks and the Romans.
And Rioja's
earliest wine-growing history
can be traced back
to them as well.
Rioja has been producing wine
since the Phoenicians
were there.
Around
the middle of the 18th century,
you had a guy who actually
went to Bordeaux.
And he saw that
they were using barrels there.
[glass shattering]
They came back to Rioja,
and because
there were restrictions
on how much they could charge
for wine at the time,
it became too cost-prohibitive
for them to actually be able
to incorporate
the use of barrels
because
barrels are very expensive.
I mean, they are today.
But even back then,
even more so.
And so that never happened.
[Jim] So Rioja's first
flirtation with oak barrels
didn't work out long-term,
but it would
by no means be the last.
About 50 years later,
there was a small
disagreement in Spain.
It was about who should
ascend to the throne
-when King Ferdinand VII died.
-[Ferdinand's portrait groans]
Ferdinand left instructions
on how he should be succeeded.
But his brother, Don Carlos said
those instructions were invalid
because Ferdinand's
proposed heir was female.
[woman screams]
Ferdinand's daughter,
Isabella II,
did indeed rise to the throne.
But since she was just
three years old at the time,
the affairs of state
were handled by a regent.
One of those
was Baldomero Espartero.
Espartero defended Isabella's
claim to the throne vigorously
against her enemies,
the Carlists.
He was so vigorous in fact,
that when Isabella was of age
to take full control
of her throne,
Espartero decamped to London
to cool off for a few years.
He took his aide Marietta
with him.
While in London,
Espartero and Marrieta saw
how much wine Bordeaux
was selling in England.
As landowners
and winemakers themselves,
they saw opportunity.
So, Marrieta
went to Bordeaux to learn
and bring that knowledge
back to Rioja.
The result
was a big jump in quality.
And then they were learning
winemaking techniques
from the-- the Bordelaise.
And when they came back,
that's when
they really instituted
um, and really started
to see more of the usage of oak.
[Jim] Rioja got
another lucky break
in the middle 19th century
when their vines fared well
against Phylloxera,
compared
to neighboring regions.
Lots of wine producers
from Bordeaux,
where Phylloxera halted
nearly everything,
moved to Rioja and the industry
grew even further.
Then you saw a lot of winemakers
from France
that actually
crossed the border.
A lot of Bordelaise
in particular
that crossed the border
and brought techniques
with them.
And of course, one of their
most important techniques
were-- was the use of barrel.
So that's--
that's why you see
this really strong connection
between Bordeaux
and-- and-- and Rioja.
[Jim] As usual
in 20th-century Western Europe,
everything was interrupted
by a couple of wars.
But in recent decades,
Rioja has, again,
clawed its way back
to the forefront of wine.
[upbeat jazz music]
[Jim] When we last
talked about the US,
it was providing rootstock
to help keep
European wines alive
under the threat of Phylloxera
at the end of the 19th century.
A few decades after that
came prohibition,
which was
an unqualified success.
When prohibition was lifted,
the American wine business
could return to normal.
[overwhelming buzzing]
But it experienced
a moment of existential ennui.
Sure, the shadow
of prohibition was gone,
but the long shadow
of the great European wines
remained and the US vintners
were still in it.
American wine
at the time was a mess.
The work that the Cistercians
had done for Burgundy and wine
back in the 12th century
had never been done
in California.
But to be fair,
California is huge.
Way too big
to traipse up and down it,
picking the grapes, studying
the soil and the climate,
making hundreds,
thousands of batches of wine,
and cataloging all results.
But in 1935 Albert Winkler
and Maynard Amerine
went on and did it anyway.
World War II had just ended
and while people liked to drink,
they were also very familiar
with European doings.
Winkler advocated for a way
to break the European mold
in America.
Why should American
wine producers
be producing a Bordeaux?
Why not find
the best grape for your land
then make the best wine
you can from that grape?
Maybe instead of Loir drinkers
or Tuscan drinkers,
people could become
Chardonnay drinkers
or Pinot Noir?
Maybe even,
and I recommended it, Merlot.
Why should anyone who loves
Oregon Pinots
know even where Oregon is?
All you got to know...
is that you liked it.
[Jim] It would be decades
before the work Winkler
and Amerine did
was emphatically proven right
at the Judgment of Paris
when two American wines
were judged the winners
alongside the best of France.
Not much has been
said about the event,
so we'll leave it alone,
but for sure American wine
found its voice
and was at last
in full song.
So that more or less
brings us up to date.
Now, let's talk about
where we're going
and what we've learned.
I'm a little bit
worried about wine.
I don't think
it's going away,
but I do think
the industry faces big changes.
Wine doesn't happen overnight.
You can't just, like,
put some grapes in the ground
and then the next thing
you know,
you-- you have, like,
a thing that you can sell
and we can drink it.
You know, it takes years
and years and years
to build up that
and that's gonna be--
that's gonna be crushed
for a lot of people.
The-- the places
that haven't been doing the best
will-- will start
to come into the forefront.
New areas will be, you know,
kind of like your go-tos,
and places that we see
as the classic style of wine
will start to,
kind of not saying fall apart,
but they're gonna fall apart.
Like if we keep seeing fires
and hail and drought
and floods,
like, we're not gonna
have these places
to talk about anymore.
[Jim]
The Riojas, the Bordeaux?
The Riojas, the Bordeaux.
Riojas' not going anywhere.
Bordeaux, but Bordeaux--
It could become
too hot in Spain,
you know,
or it could become too wet
or there could be
that one hail storm
that finally wipes out Burgundy.
Like, you know, you just
never know what's gonna happen.
And I think those places
that we know to make
fantastic wines
are not gonna be--
they're gonna be more expensive,
of course, the quality
is not going to be the same.
Um, and we're going to find
alternative places to go.
I think from
a technical perspective,
the answers are the same today
as they were
for the Cistercians,
the Lavoisiers, the Winklers,
the Pasteurs,
everybody
who impacted this story.
You know, they surmounted
their challenges and we can too.
And maybe we can do it in a way
that doesn't come off
as too pretentious.
We turn now
to the Gospel of Gil Kulers.
Take it away Gil.
And there are folks
who really are sort of haughty
and they-- they make you think
that you're not good enough
to appreciate a wine like this.
[organ music playing]
Man, that really bothers me.
That's the thing
that I really fight against
because wine comes--
since it's 8,000 years old,
it's the sacrament.
It's all these other things.
It's a big, big subject.
It already has
its image issues.
It's already stigmatized,
and then you come along
with your tie
and your little testament.
And you have that body language
and you're sort of
judging someone
and deciding that
they can't possibly enjoy...
this type of wine.
I'm not allowed to curse, am I?
[Jim] Yeah, you're allowed
to do whatever you want.
You can go to heck.
Um...
[Jim] Is that cursing?
It is when I grew up.
Amen.
Now, one thing I've learned
while making this film
is that wine experts serve
a very important role.
If you're listening,
they'll give you a little story
to take with you, with your wine
wherever you're going.
So for example,
when you show up to the party,
as you're handing
the bottle to the host,
you can say, "Oh, yeah,
I thought that one
was very interesting.
It's biodynamic.
It's a seventh-generation
winemaker,
all female-owned, whatever."
You didn't know
that shit, man.
You got it
from your wine expert.
And that's okay.
Remember to take
that little story with you.
It's the most important part
of your interaction
with your wine expert.
But here's
the most important thing
that I learned about wine
while making this film.
And I invite you to check
my math by trying this yourself.
I asked a lot of people about
the best wine that they ever had
and they all answered
in a similar way.
They begin
by describing the setting.
What time of year it was,
what country they were in,
what the weather was like,
what friends
and loved ones were around.
But here's the crazy thing.
Often they forget to mention
the nitpicky wine stuff
like grape and vintage.
I don't think it's possible
to talk about the best wine
you ever had without describing
the setting and the company.
So what does all this mean?
Well, it means that
when we're looking for wine,
what we're looking for
is not the bottle.
We're looking for
that moment
when all the other stuff
comes together.
A wine could be
part of that moment,
but it doesn't have to be.
Now, all this stuff about
vintages and terroir
is interesting.
But if you really want to
enjoy wine,
keep good people around you,
be open to new experiences,
and if you're having
a great experience,
make sure to notice.
Oh, and make sure
to invite me.
[upbeat jazz music]
[music fades]
[Jim]
Wine is so deeply fascinating.
I love that every bottle
of wine is a piece of art
made by an artist
who had to count
on the weather.
As much as
we might revere a painter
like Caravaggio, for example,
his work
is famously hard to drink.
When done, right,
wine is also a giving art.
It's an industry
where the most learned people
assist folks like me
who know almost nothing.
[chuckles] Though, why would
anybody devote their lives
to something like that,
it's amazing.
So I made a documentary
about it, as anyone would.
I made this title sequence
in my garage.
Okay.
First question, why grapes?
Because they're the best.
You can make wine
out of tons of other stuff.
It's just that thanks
to sugar content and acidity,
no other fruit
can match grapes.
So all of those things
mean that you know, if--
if you went
to the engineers at MIand said, "We want you
to design a fruit
that would be perfect
for making wine,"
they would come up
with a grape.
Grapes are so good
for fermentation
that they do
most of the work themselves,
which is probably
how early people figured out
how to make
what we now call wine.
Now, this moment
happened long ago,
so long before writing
and we don't know
exactly when or where.
But the earliest
evidence suggests
that wine was being made
as long ago
as 6000 BCE,
in what is now
the country of Georgia.
They might only have intended to
keep grape juice from spoiling.
But by keeping fermented
grape juice away from oxygen,
they made wine
which is drinkable
rather than vinegar,
which is less so.
The most iconic feature of
the Georgian winemaking process
is, well, it's the wine,
but the second
most iconic is the kvevri.
[Jim] The kvevri is
a magnificent piece of pottery
made for fermenting wine.
Like people,
each has their own character.
To make wine in a kvevri,
you just pick your grapes,
smash them a bit,
and then plop the whole affair,
pips and all into the kvevri
and seal it up for six months.
That's old school.
That's, like, a Republic
of Georgia style of making wine
which they still use
to this day.
But it helps
control temperature
when you have something
underground, it can be covered.
But you see the clay pots
used above and underground now.
There's a story about
how people will sit
and sit with
their kvevris underground
and listen to the--
listen to the wine
and the wine is gonna tell you
when it's ready to be consumed.
And then it goes around
from person to person
whoever's making that wine,
"Let me fill my jug up."
You know, it's--
it's like a communal thing too,
which is cool.
You gotta--
you gotta understand
that wine's history
is as-- as--
pretty much as-- as--
it's 8000 years old.
I mean, that's, 6000 BC,
we've been
making wines as humans.
[Jim] Okay,
but what did it taste like?
Yeah, I think the answer
to that question is,
well, terrible is one thing,
but I think
it probably was concentrated
and it wasn't filtered
or fined.
So it was probably
pretty chunky,
you know,
and I'm sure it was dense.
And that's why I think
it's interesting with all--
with--
with winemaking techniques
that have been adapted
throughout time.
Having bubbles remain in it,
you know, for sparkling wine,
probably made shitty wine
taste better
because it's got bubbles in it,
you know.
[people cheering]
A lot of mistakes
happening, probably.
The situation of--
of finding fruit
and putting it somewhere
and forgetting about it.
There's always--
there's been trial and error,
I guess without--
within the history of the world.
And so someone took
the trial and they drank it.
Though we can only guess
what early wine tasted like,
signs do point to gross.
I don't think
anybody would dispute that.
I think
you're selling wine short.
Well, at least we can agree
that Neolithic people
did not have a strong grasp
of the spread of contaminants,
unlike modern people, who...
No, never mind.
Let's go to Egypt.
[mysterious music playing]
Grape growing hit Egypt
in about 3000 BCE
and the Egyptians
immediately decided
that wine was something
they should be buried with,
which is just about
the worst excuse I ever heard
for not opening
the last bottle in the house.
To friendship.
[all] To friendship.
-Cheers.
-Oh.
-[man] Oh, that's delightful.
-[woman] It is.
-[man] Fantastic notes.
-I think you're right.
It's hard to count
how quickly one bottle goes
-when you've got five.
-I know.
Yes, yes, uh, but the memories
will last forever.
Yeah.
Well, I thought
you'd be more generous
than a three-ounce pour,
but, you know.
[all chuckle]
I mean, like, you know,
we've been drinking
her out of house and home.
We don't want
to be poor guests,
but she gave us every bottle
except that one
over there.
-Oh, I see it.
-Yeah.
I mean, I could
have another, no lie.
-I mean, I could.
-I mean, I could drink
-unlimited wine.
-Yeah.
That-- that wine,
it's-- it's terrible.
We should totally crack
that open, like, right now.
No, no, I think
we should leave that alone.
It looks just perfect
where it is
right next to my golf clubs
and a picture of me
in the first grade.
Well, I mean, like,
it looks a little lonely
on your wine rack when
there's no other bottles there.
Just a little, you know.
I think it will look better
in my glass.
[all chuckle] Yeah.
-We're leaving it there.
-Oh.
-Oh.
-Okay.
Well, my glass
looks a little empty.
Last sip.
I took
all of mine already, so...
Listen, what's the big deal
about that bottle of wine, like?
-Exactly, what's the big deal?
-What's the big deal?
What is the big deal?
Come on, Jess,
what's the deal with the bottle?
-What's the deal?
-What is it?
-Tell us.
-I--
I can't have that wine
until I'm dead.
Couldn't we just replace it?
No, no, no,
I bought that one
for my death.
[Jim]
Around the same time, 3000 BCE,
vines were being cultivated
in Greece as well.
Though, wine didn't
really hit it big there
until 1000 BCE.
That happened
because of the advent
of something called a city.
I think when I think of Greeks,
that's what I think of.
It's like this, like,
what's painted on the vases,
you know, people laying
around with-- being fed grapes
and jugs and cherubs
carrying them around.
You know, that's what I think
of when I think of the Greeks.
Much like today,
early urbanites discovered
that their lives were too busy
to allow them to ferment
their own wine.
So they bought it
from vintners
and it soon became popular
with all strata
of Grecian society,
including
and most importantly, sailors
who took it with them all over
the Mediterranean and beyond.
Now, while the Greeks caught on
a little bit earlier
in terms of spreading wine,
we have the Romans to thank.
The Romans were to wine
what we Americans
are to cargo shorts.
Like the Greeks,
the Romans viewed wine
as being for everyone
from all strata of society,
from the lowest of the low
to Caesar Augustus himself.
Water at the time
was often disgusting,
but mixing a little wine in
made it slightly more palatable
and killed off
a few nasty things
living in the water as well.
You can just imagine
what city water
was like in 1000 BCE.
That's over 2500 years
before this,
the Trevi Fountain.
In early Rome, your best bet
for drinkable water was wine.
As a result,
the Romans took wine with them
everywhere they went,
they planted vineyards
all over the place.
And many of those
original Roman vineyards
still produce wine
to this day.
The only reason we know
about a lot of this stuff
is due to the efforts
of Pliny the Elder,
a Roman military commander.
Pliny spent his days working
faithfully for the empire.
But every minute
he had to himself,
he was either
studying or writing.
It is said that Pliny
ignored his need for sleep
because that time
could be used for writing.
[trumpet sounding]
He hated walking
because he couldn't walk
and write at the same time
and that he only made love
if his partner agreed
to be scrawled on
like a piece of parchment.
Granted,
I made that last part up.
But since I wrote it,
I think Pliny might have
begrudgingly approved.
Pliny wrote a lot.
But his only work
to survive through the ages
is his natural history
in which
he attempted to describe
the entire natural world.
Though he was not the world's
most assiduous fact-checker,
I think we can
forgive him
given that it's tough
to cross-reference sources
when only one person has ever
written about something.
Regardless, Pliny had a lot
to say about wines.
Good wines, bad wines.
Wine play.
Wine thoughts
with Pliny the Elder.
"It is the property of wine,
when drunk,
to cause
a feeling of warmth
in the interior
of the viscera,
and when poured
upon the exterior of the body
to be cool and refreshing."
Pliny also wrote
about Falernian wine,
which was a wine supposedly so
strong that it was flammable,
meaning it would have been
more than three times
as alcoholic
as today's wine.
The Romans were absolutely
bonkers for Falernian wine.
As the legend goes,
a humble farmer, Falernus,
had a meet-cute
with the Roman God
of viticulture, Liber.
The result
was Falernian wine.
Now we'll probably never know
what it tasted like,
but we can enjoy it as a great
early example of overhype.
Some people loved
Falernian wine,
-or at least claimed to.
-[demon] Yes!
[Jim] Some people
said it wasn't everything
-it was built up to be.
-[man spitting]
Pliny was an expert
on Falernian wine
and was able to taste,
whether he said so
out loud or not
when his friends
served him fake Falernian.
[glass shattering]
A century later,
the physician Galen
would doubt that
all the Falernian wine
could possibly be real
just based on quantity.
Real or fake, Falernian wine
later dwindled and disappeared.
But I think it's a great example
to keep in mind
because it's a story
about human beings
focusing on the aspects
of something
that don't matter that much.
Lots of people today
buy things
because of the brand name
without really knowing why.
I would love to be able
to afford to do that
because I want people
to think I'm cool.
But what really matters is
being more like Pliny the Elder.
Writing more,
pouring wine on yourself,
and maybe writing on people
if they're okay with it.
How do we get from early wine
to the point where, you know,
a little bit later on
Romans were dictating that
if you come across
a south-facing slope,
you need to plant
some grapes?
Okay. Yeah.
I like-- I like the fact
that you ask questions
-with three-hour answers.
-I apologize. [chuckles]
Um, so first of all,
wine and health.
Um, and by the way,
current research basically says
that wine probably
isn't good for you.
It does some things
that are good for you,
but the risk of liver damage
and/or alcoholism
outweigh those to the point
where if you were
to take someone and just say,
on a pure--
pure health basis,
should you start
drinking wine at age 30?
I think most doctors at this
point would say, "Probably not."
That said,
in the ancient world,
the old rule was
that water would kill you.
Um, and you know, one of the
questions I ask my students
is you've got
all the microclimates
and soil types
in the world in Asia,
why didn't they ever develop
a big wine industry?
And the answer
is they drank tea.
And the first step
in drinking tea
is boiling the water.
In Europe,
we didn't do that so much.
We made beer that way,
which is why beer has always
been considered a healthy drink.
So, going back to that
ancient, um, medical advice,
first, do no harm.
At the very least if you're
giving people soup or wine,
you're not introducing
new pathogens to them,
you're not making them worse.
At least before
Louis Pasteur
was a key part of--
of a healthy lifestyle.
And I'm still gonna argue
that a glass a day
is probably
not gonna do you much damage
and may help you
in a couple of ways.
Though they were still producing
wine in much the same way
that the Georgians
had 6000 years previous,
the Romans invented
something wholly new.
The wine barrel.
Or as kids today call it,
a rolly boy.
Well, as far as what
we were talking about earlier
with transportation,
barrel is much easier to move
than a pot that doesn't
have a proper bottom, right?
And that breaks really easily.
It's heavier, but it's more,
like, user-friendly.
Barrel does a couple
of things for wine.
One, it-- it's a--
it's a vessel that allows
for just enough oxygen transfer
to age a wine within it.
But also it doesn't make
the wine oxidize.
For me, first thing I think of
is adding a flavor.
Um, whether it be
a heavy toast or--
or-- or cinnamon or vanilla.
Um, it also is a vessel
to help mellow your wine
as well to soften the tannins
that would come
from the grape skins.
They last, you can use them
for a long time.
So, like, it's an economical way
of doing it too
when you have neutral barrel
because you can use it
for years and years.
I mean, there are people
who have their--
their, you know,
giant fermenting tanks
that are made of wood
that they've used since the,
you know, 1750s
that are still being used.
That's crazy, right?
That it's held up like that.
But I-- I think
of aging first before travel
because I-- I guess I live
in a modern world where,
you know, you can
put it in a tanker now.
[chuckles] You can put
your juice in a tanker
and ship it somewhere else.
[Jim] Wine had
a fantastic few 100 years
under the Roman Empire,
but with Rome's fall,
wine returned to being
a primarily local endeavor.
But for wine,
this wasn't twilight,
merely a passing cloud.
[classical violin music playing]
Benedict of Nursia
was born to Roman nobility,
but when he was 14,
he became disgusted with Rome
and he left
to found a monastery.
Before he died,
he wrote out a set of rules
for monks to follow,
including that each monk
should be allowed one hemina
or about 270 milliliters,
or two stingy glasses per day.
This helped further democratize
wine in the medieval world.
The only problem was
it was still gross.
[monk spitting]
And worse,
the medieval poor were faced
with the prospect of drinking
wine stored in animal hides,
which would have imparted
all manner of flavors,
if not bacteria.
Imagine wine that's been
left outside for eight months
and then decanted
in a shoe.
Then again, some people I trust
don't seem to mind.
You're talking about,
like, a real wineskin.
[Jim] It's just--
they cut it off the animal.
-Yeah.
-Tie the ends.
Let's do it, let's do it.
I'm here for that.
Whether in a shoe or not
wine was ready
and a big break came
with the rise
of the medieval middle class.
The middle class
were a new breed.
[man grunts]
They formed
something called guilds
which were a little bit
like early corporations,
including all
the good and bad things
about modern corporations.
By joining a guild
and displaying its crest,
you showed
potential customers
that you weren't
just any old idiot.
You were a professional.
Guilds also gave rise
to a merchant class.
They weren't poor
and while they weren't nobility,
they were definitely rich
and they definitely wanted wine.
At the same time,
population and methods
of transportation were growing,
which had a similar effect
on the feudal system
that the internet,
among other factors,
had on locally owned
retail stores.
The upshot of all this
though for the wine trade
was increased demand
and easier transport
which led to lots more business.
But it also meant
that regions had to compete
on the basis of things
like quality
in addition to price.
And because of that competition
for the first time,
common people
had a chance of sampling wine
that did not taste
like old shoe.
Around this time,
there was one city that
had everything it needed
to be a wine production
powerhouse...
except for a thriving market.
And that city was in a duchy
called Aquitaine.
The big boss of Aquitaine
was Duchess Eleanor,
who was also married
to Louis VIII of France.
And thus,
in addition to being a Duchess,
she was Queen of France,
but she got her marriage
to Louis VIII annulled
and married
Henry Plantagenet instead.
Henry went on
to become King of England.
Aquitaine became
an English territory.
And all of a sudden
our hero city got itself a huge,
new English market
for its wine.
But Eleanor's ex-husband,
Louis VIII,
still King of France,
invaded Aquitaine
intending to fight
every last person there
into the sea.
Louis was thwarted
when our heroic city
stopped the assault
of the French.
The English royalty
were understandably thrilled.
As a result,
our city became
the go-to wine city
for England and the world.
What was that city
that stood strong
against the invading
French bast--
It was Bordeaux.
Which is in France.
Because
of the Hundred Years' War,
which was fought
for over 115 years.
But-- but-- but this--
never mind.
Look, around the same time,
just a few 100 miles away,
near the city of Dijon
lived an extremely devout
group of monks
known as the Cistercians.
[religious music playing]
[Jim] Though they lived
by the same rules
set forth by Saint Benedict,
whom we mentioned previously,
the Cistercians
positively laughed
at their Benedictine
contemporaries.
Those Benedictines
with their sinful indulgences,
like eating and talking.
-Ha, savages.
-Oh?
[Jim] Except the Cistercians
much more closely observed
a vow of silence
than the Benedictines.
So they probably
only laughed on the inside.
After the fall
of the Roman Empire,
really the only group
of people in Europe
who were organized,
economically viable,
and literate...
was the church.
They had a network
that allowed them
to travel all over Europe
and stay safely
in a church every night.
Nobody else had that.
In fact, if you were
outside the walls
of most medieval cities
at night,
you were beyond the law,
which is how we came up
with the term outlaw.
So they were following
the Roman recipes
on how to make wine.
Where this story
gets complicated
is the church
started to sell indulgences.
[Jim]
So you could be a sinner.
But if you gave
a gift to the church,
you could be absolved
of some of your sins
or at least reduce the amount
of time you spent in purgatory
before you went to heaven.
This seemed like
a pretty good idea
to many wealthy people.
But one of the things
they would do
is they would give vineyards
to the church
because A,
vineyards were valuable.
But B, the church always had
the best winemaker in the region
because he's read
the books.
Everybody else is making wine
the way we used to make it.
"I don't know, my grandpa
used to do it this way,"
but the church
always had the books.
And what it meant
was they were getting vineyards
in different parts
of the region,
often gifts
in return for indulgences
and then
they were making the wines
and as they made the wines,
each wine was made
exactly to the same recipe.
And what they discovered is...
Holy Moly,
the wines taste different,
that wine tastes
different from this wine
even though we made it
exactly the same way.
So that gave birth
to this whole idea of terroir.
[Jim] Terroir is a bit
of a nebulous thing,
which is probably why
the term is so popular
because it's hard
to misapply.
But basically,
it means the way
that a wine represents
its physical place.
[upbeat music playing]
You know,
when you are feeling
a little bit
unsure of yourself
and you wanna hide
from the world.
-That's foxy.
-[buzzer buzzes]
When you look across the bar
and you see someone
drinking wine...
It's, like, squirrely
where you're like,
"Oh, I can't figure out
how I feel about this person,"
but you're a little
more sassy with it.
And you're like,
"If I drink enough wine,
-that person will look better."
-[buzzer buzzes]
It's a little bit gamey.
Some people like it.
Some folks don't.
-But they call it foxy.
-[buzzer dings]
You know, when you misspeak,
uh, in a conversation
and you know
that everybody heard it
but they're all acting
like, "No--
no-- no, nothing's wrong"
but you know that they're lying,
-that's mouth feel.
-[buzzer buzzes]
Mouth feel is, like,
what animals use to sense
whether
they like others or not.
-It happens in the mouth.
-[buzzer buzzes]
Mouth feel is the texture
of the liquid in your mouth.
The viscosity,
how it feels against the tongue
-and the cheeks.
-[buzzer dings]
That's what happens, um,
when you're in a lab
and you accidentally
revive dinosaurs.
When you go to the dog park
and, uh,
you notice that it says,
"No small dogs allowed,"
but you have
the smallest dog...
-that's terroir.
-[buzzer buzzes]
Terroir is
this feeling of fear
that comes over you
when you don't know
the answer to something
-that you should know.
-[buzzer buzzes]
Occasionally
when the sun, like, shoots off,
-like, radioactive energy.
-[buzzer buzzes]
Tannins are that
tingly sensation on the tongue.
When you know
that something is amiss.
The more tannins you have,
the higher quality the leather.
[buzzer buzzes]
-[Jim] You wanna [indistinct]?
-No, that-- that's me. No.
I don't wanna [indistinct].
[all laugh]
It seems obvious now,
but at the time,
it was
a breakthrough discovery
that certain grapes
and certain places
are a natural match
for one another.
And we have the Cistercians
to thank for that.
The work of the Cistercian
as well as other groups
like the Benedictines,
concentrated wine's development
into the major
wine-growing regions
we know in France today.
There are quite
a few regions,
sub-regions, and cru sites,
but perhaps the most famous
are Champagne,
Burgundy, Beaujolais,
the Rhone Valley,
Bordeaux and the Loire Valley
and Alsace and Languedoc
and Provence.
There are a lot.
The Celts might have been
growing wine in France
before the Romans
barged in.
But as discussed,
the Romans really went ham.
You'll hear a lot of people
mention Burgundy
as one of the world's
fanciest wine regions.
Whereas its southern neighbor,
Beaujolais is,
so they say,
more approachable.
As we heard, Jeanine say...
I know that this wine
comes from Burgundy.
If it's red,
it's probably Pinot.
[Jim] This is the case,
thanks to a 14th-century Duke
named Philip the Bold.
Philip became
the Duke of Burgundy
because when he was 14,
he helped his father,
King John II, or John the Good,
fight the English
at the Battle of Poitiers,
which they lost.
But Phillip apparently
was bold about it.
I'm sure it was a great comfort
to the common folk
who lost family members
at the battle
to hear that the king's
14-year-old son was bold.
Philip and his dad were
both captured during the battle
and were kept in custody
until they were released
by a treaty in 1360.
Philip became
the Duke of Burgundy in 1363.
As Duke of Burgundy,
in addition
to the usual ducal duties
of killing the English
or the Flemish
or marrying
a Flemish countess,
Philip took
a lot of care and pride
in his region's wine
made from Pinot Noir.
Pinot Noir then, as now,
was hard to grow,
much harder than say, Gamay.
I assume
you've seen Sideways
and heard
Paul Giamatti deliver
an "Alas, poor Yorick-esque"
monologue on the subject,
so you know
how Pinot Noir people can get.
Philip noted that
many of the wine growers
under his ducal shadow
were growing Gamay grapes
rather than Pinot Noir.
And we presume he feared
this would hurt his wines'
and by extension,
his Duchy's reputation.
There is reason to believe
that farmers
were incentivized to plant Gamay
because they were struggling
for manpower
due to the black plague killing
a third of people in the world.
That stands to reason.
But there's not really
a time ever
when farmers don't benefit
from easier,
higher-yield crops.
Was Philip the Bold right
to banish Gamay from Burgundy?
It's easy to imagine a grower's
family suffering undue hardship,
thanks to an out-of-touch Duke
issuing edicts
out of his back office.
At the same time,
one can also easily imagine
Burgundy's competitors saying,
"What, Burgundy,
that old swill?
They don't make it
like they used to."
Whatever his reasoning,
Duke Phillip decreed
that Gamay was vile
and demanded it be ripped
from the earth.
If they wanted to grow Gamay
south in Beaujolais,
so be it.
They did
and they still do to this day.
Which should you drink?
Ask your local wine expert.
But the answer is both,
responsibly, but both.
But it wasn't just France
on the wine scene at the time.
The Germans
were beginning to have success
despite their colder climate.
In the 15th century,
a little grape
known as Riesling appeared.
[Jim]
Because Riesling produced wines
with relatively high acidity,
the wines both tasted fresher
and lasted longer
without spoiling.
But while the Cistercians
introduced and developed wines
based on a vine's location
down to the foot,
the Germans began working
on wines picked late
in the harvest,
differentiating
based on the day
and sometimes even picking
certain grapes from a bunch
and leaving others
to mature.
That's one of the coolest things
to me in the world.
Like, who did that one day?
They're like, "Oh, damn it,
all of our grapes
are covered in mold.
Let's-- let's press it
and see what happens."
You know what I mean?
Like, that-- somebody did that.
And now this-- some of the most
expensive wines in the world
are made from moldy grapes.
[imitates explosion]
Their labeling is a little--
it's slightly different
from what we know
as traditional overall labels
because there's always,
like, a vineyard site
and a town involved.
A quality level.
So if you don't know
those quality levels,
you don't know how much sugar
you're walking into.
Yes, so I would say
German labels
are probably the most
complicated labels to read.
Um, and then France after that.
With, like, Germany,
you got Cabernet,
you've got Auslese,
Beerenauslese,
you have the-- the vineyard,
you have the cru site,
and you're just like...
"Is this Riesling
gonna go with my salad?"
Like, that's all
I want to know.
Today, the Germans
still produce delicious,
high-quality
late-harvest wine,
as well as
everyday table wine.
But with all
that great wine around,
why even produce
everyday table wine?
Simple, because
Americans will drink it.
[Jim] By the 17th century,
a nobleman from Bordeaux,
Arnaud III de Pontac,
Monsieur de Pontac,
if you're nasty,
realized three things.
First, that as
the Cistercians had proven,
some wines
were better than others
based on their precise
geographical location.
Second, that according
to him, anyway,
his Haut-Brion wines
were one of those special wines.
And third,
that taverns across Europe
sold almost all wine
by slobbing it together
in a huge barrel.
So no one knew if they were
drinking his amazing Haut-Brion
or some rot gut pigswill
made five meters away.
So what did de Pontac do?
Simple.
He doubled the price
of his wine
and then insisted
it was worth it.
In short,
he invented wine marketing.
How much
of the wine trade is marketing?
Um...
I'm gonna say that 98% of it.
If there is ever a story
about marketing, it's champagne.
You grow grapes where
it's too cool to get them ripe.
And so you add
extra sugar
hoping that
you'll make up the difference
and you get bubbles
and you think, "Oh, okay,
I've got lemons,
I'm gonna make lemonade."
And then you make it
a wine of celebration.
They were brilliant at this
and the stuff's delicious.
So who can complain?
[Jim] How much
of the wine trade is marketing?
Hmm.
I feel like this is, like,
something for me to poo-poo.
Um... [sighs]
People-- people come in,
they're like,
"I love the label
of this wine"
and I'm like,
"That's why it's on there."
Like it's--
it's because it's pleasing
and it makes you want to go
like, "I like this label.
I will buy this wine."
Um, and that's marketing, right?
Um, I don't think
that necessarily means
that it's a bad wine,
um, at all.
I think that-- that
sometimes people just, like,
want a quirky head
on there that's exploding
or whatever it is.
One, when you're a big company
and you have a recognizable
label that everyone knows,
then you're gonna be
very successful.
And if you screw that,
if you move-- change it around,
sometimes people,
you know, react poorly to it.
When you're talking about,
like, simplistic,
small-production wines,
I think that word of mouth,
honestly, social media
has done a lot
for small-production wines.
Um, and--
and good websites...
do a lot for--
for small production wines.
So--
and that's marketing, right?
[Jim]
Well, speaking of stories,
I'm thinking of,
uh, Haut-Brion,
you know, they're that--
according to my research anyway,
they were kind of the first,
uh, place to do that.
To say, "My wine
is better than their wine
because my vineyard
is a meter away from theirs."
We wouldn't have--
we wouldn't have [indistinct]
if it didn't--
if it wasn't for that, right?
If it wasn't for people
saying, like,
"I'm the best,"
and then someone else
was like, "Sure."
Under table money,
you know, like,
we wouldn't have those things,
which is,
I mean, those wines
are thousands, Haut-Brion,
like, thousands of dollars
for a bottle of wine.
That's, is it-- is it amazing?
Absolutely, change your life.
But, like...
does it exist because 200 years
or 100 and something years ago,
someone was like,
"This is the place."
But also...
it's that whole, like,
I have a wall around my space.
"This is my space.
It is the best space
because my wall is here.
I know-- I know your space
is connected to my wall,
but it sucks because
you're not in within my wall.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's-- that's how it--
that's how it--
that's how it works.
[Jim] How much
of the wine trade is marketing?
Oh.
Hmm, uh...
What seems to be a bigger number
is not really
because I--
I am a big believer in,
if you see
a commercial for it,
then I'm probably
not drinking it.
And when you think about
your smaller families,
um, they don't have market--
they don't have
marketing budgets,
and that's usually
who I want.
Um, so from
the large perspective
of the wine industry,
marketing is probably--
God, I'd say 65% of everything,
you know,
exposure is a big deal.
Especially for a product
that most people
don't understand.
You know,
if you're exposed to it
and it's flashy and, you know,
you-- you see all the colors
or whatever you see,
then you're probably
more amped to go buy it
and to get excited about it.
Um, but I-- I--
everyone's different,
and I get more excited about
the folks that don't have
a budget for marketing.
That get their marketing
from word of mouth,
you know,
because your product's so good
and made so impressively that,
you know, it's gonna sell out.
But, you know, yeah,
you think about, like,
Madame Clicquot
and she's the queen of--
if it wasn't for her,
there would be
no marketing, period.
Like no way of knowing
about the products in hand
and-- and making it.
I guess she's the queen
of celebration.
Really, so yeah.
[Jim] But you know,
to say that something
is a grocery store wine.
That's-- that's an insult.
It is, it is.
And I understand
what people mean by that,
you know, just because
you see it in a grocery store
doesn't mean that
it's-- it's-- it's inferior.
You know, there's a couple of
things that we've sold here
that, you know,
just happen to...
get a good name for itself.
And so if I say if you made it
to the supermarket
and I sold your wine,
then that's a good-ass wine.
You know, like, that's it,
that wine was fantastic.
But once we figured that out,
we're just like,
"Okay, that-- that-- that train
has been gone now, so."
[Jim] As the experts
have each mentioned,
Madame Clicquot
was another pioneer
in wine marketing.
When her husband,
Francois, died in 1805,
she took over
the family business
and invented the concept
of champagne out of nothing.
She was not yet
30 years old at the time.
Now, sure,
de Pontac might have been
a great early
marketer of Obrien,
but he didn't invent red wine.
Madam Clicquot created
a business for her product
with nothing more than her wit
and the sheer force of her will.
When we drink champagne today,
we are taking part
in the legacy
of a serious badass.
Stepping back a bit
from Madame Clicquot
to the 17th century though.
European explorers
were discovering the new world,
which was a surprise
to the people
already living there.
Those explorers
brought grapes with them,
much as the Romans had done
thousands of years before.
They planted
and cultivated grapes
north into what is now
the United States,
as well as south into Argentina,
Chile, Mexico.
Honestly, just about everywhere.
Colonists were often commanded
to plant vineyards,
but at least in the US,
there was a small problem.
The wine that they produced
did not taste good.
It tasted foxy.
Yeah, well, first of all,
there's a--
there's even an argument
about what foxiness is,
but it's a pretty simple concept
and it goes back--
let's go back
to Thomas Jefferson.
Thomas Jefferson
tried desperately
to grow grapes in Virginia.
Um, the easiest way
to explain it
is that they taste a little bit
like Concord Grape Juice.
Concord Grape Juice is a--
Concord
is a native American grape.
And that smell is in some--
it-- it is related
to the kinds of grapes
that are native
to the United States.
And some people
call it foxy.
And some people say, "Well,
that's not exactly what it is,
but it is that character
that makes those wines
taste different.
And you know,
there-- there are wines
made from Native American grapes
that are pretty darn successful.
Manischewitz.
That's a Concord wine.
Uh, and if you want to know
what early wines
in America tasted like,
they were probably
drier than that
because it's actually
pretty sophisticated
to make a wine that has
that residual sweetness in it
without letting it referment.
That's basically
what they were drinking
in the good old days.
So if-- if you wanna drink
what Thomas Jefferson
was drinking at Monticello,
grab a bottle
of Manischewitz and have at it.
[Jim] What does
a foxy wine taste like?
[indistinct] question.
Foxy?
[Jim]
What does a fox taste like?
I have a really
hard time with that
because I also wonder
the same thing, like,
what does a mouse taste like?
Hairy? I don't know.
Um, that's what
it tastes like to me,
but some people like that.
Some people like that earthy,
musty, mousy, foxy, sweaty,
horse sweat kind of thing,
you know?
Um, a-- a fox,
I think-- um...
I think they probably
taste like a...
I don't even know.
We have foxes
in our neighborhood.
They look so cool in pictures,
and then you see them
in real life
and you're like,
"That thing's ugly."
[chuckles] It's gross.
The American colonists
kept at it
until downy mildew
and then the American Civil War
demolished the wine trade.
But in California,
much as today,
things were different.
[Jim] Jean-Louis Vignes
was making and selling wine
in California in the 1840s.
And the gold rush
later that decade
also had a profound effect
on the demand for wine.
Since unlike gold, the miners
could actually find wine.
By the end of the 19th century,
Californian wines
were flowing like...
well, they were flowing,
which is good,
they would be needed.
[upbeat music]
Also in the mid-19th century,
a man named James Busby,
along with others,
imported grape vines
to Australia
which was particularly difficult
because it was Australia.
Australia
is a gigantic island
made primarily
of deadly spiders,
which is why,
until recently,
Australian wine production
has been focused
on stronger ports
and sherries
because Australians need to
drink a little courage
just to go outside.
But today Australia's
wine production spans
all kinds of wines,
which is enjoyed by
all kinds of deadly spiders.
Everything was changing
in the middle 17th century.
Descartes was extolling
the virtues of reason.
Isaac Newton published
his Principia,
including the laws of motion.
And that verve for deliberation
came also to winemaking.
And with it some new techniques
for storing wine
with corks and bottles
and a creepy old man.
As all this was happening,
a man named Antoine Lavoisier
did something
absolutely brilliant.
He married his wife
Mary Anne Lavoisier.
Together, they went on
an unbelievable tear
through science,
shaping the way that we look at
the world to this day.
Most importantly
for our story though,
the Lavoisiers
brought science to wine.
Their contributions
would be built on
by people like Adamo Fabbroni
and later Louis Pasteur.
Pasteur showed that whatever
is wrong or right with a wine,
the reasons are likely down
to living things called germs.
Fermentation, germs.
Wine going sour, germs.
That weird smell in the parlor,
parlor germs.
Pasteur loved germs.
He loved them so much,
he named his son Germs.
Okay, that's not true.
But he did realize that
germs were responsible
for a lot of
disease and decay,
which led him to try heating
liquids above a temperature
that the germs could tolerate,
thus killing them off.
This process is known today
as heating stuff up,
but it's also known
as pasteurization.
And you've probably seen
the word pasteurized
if you've ever seen milk.
Though wine
isn't typically pasteurized,
Pasteur's work explained
the fermentation process
and helped make better wine,
that lasted longer.
And with the use
of more modern bottles and corks
by the middle 19th century,
wine really took off.
I mean,
it was only 400 years ago
that we figured out how to use,
how to use--
how to manufacture corks.
And how to actually--
It's not just manufacturing
corks and doing it consistently
because they did know how to--
the properties of cork
and it was good properties.
But actually manufacturing
the bottles,
the same shape every time
because you have to have
standard corks
and standard bottles.
That was a huge technological
leap forward back then.
[Jim] But also
because of these advances,
it became possible
to age wine.
It allows, I think, for a wine
to show its true potential
or fall apart
and be destroyed very easily.
I think it's a delicate
balance with aging.
[Jim]
But trouble was fermenting.
A shitty insect
called Phylloxera
was destroying
European vine roots.
-[insect buzzing]
-Thankfully though,
American vine roots were
resistant to pests.
Grafting a vine of one grape
onto the root of another
grows the top
of the vine's grapes,
not the roots grapes.
The dying European roots
were dug up,
American ones planted,
European vines grafted
onto them,
European wine was saved.
-Easy.
-[crowd cheering]
Except, of course,
it wasn't nearly that easy.
[crowd booing]
It took decades of research
and development
to match roots to soil.
And in many cases, the solution
was as bad as the problem.
But European wineries
survived
just in time for many of them
to be destroyed
during World War I.
After World War I
and World War II,
lots of things were different.
In parts of the world,
water was cleaner.
It was no longer necessary
to drink wine or beer
merely because
they were the safest beverages.
The popularity
of spirits and cocktails
also affected
wine's popularity.
But at the same time,
wine was experiencing
a big uptick in quality.
People valued it more.
New laws and regulations emerged
to categorize and classify wine.
The only problem is that
in order to classify something,
you need to come up
with some guiding principles.
But what happens
if nobody can agree
what those are?
In Italy, the Denominazione
di Origine Controllata or DOC
decided to freeze
the development of Italian wine
as it was at the time
rather than letting
wine producers
continue to employ
new techniques
coming to the fore.
To which some of those Italian
wine producers responded,
and I quote, "Vaffanculo!"
[Jim] Some winemakers,
particularly the Tuscan region,
struck out on their own
outside the classifications
and made outstanding wines
which are legendary today.
That's great for them,
but it made
the DOC look a little bit dumb.
The battle between the DOC
and the rogue winemakers
got sorted out
to some degree
with an expansion
of Italian wine classification
in the 1990s.
But the result,
and this is true of nearly
all classification systems,
is pretty confusing.
A guy could spend a lifetime
laboriously purchasing
one wine after another,
opening it,
sharing it with friends,
left to his own
devices to decide
whether he likes it or not.
Oof, you know, if I must.
To be fair
to the classification systems,
even if the early days
were rocky,
and even if the resulting system
is confusing,
someone's got to
keep their eye on things.
You know, if I grew grapes
and I sold them for a profit,
I'd be trying to think of ways
I could grow more grapes
for more profit.
Anyone would.
The problem is that
maximizing production
doesn't necessarily
maximize quality.
If quality were to slip,
overall interest in wine
would too,
everyone could suffer.
This conflict goes on today
and presumably will forever
and is getting weirder
all the time.
-[Jim] Is wine too complicated?
-No.
For me? Or for--
for that guy?
I think we-- I think we try
to make it too complicated.
It doesn't have to be
complicated.
It is complicated,
and it can be,
there's a rabbit hole,
there's--
there's stacks and stacks
and stacks of books
that you can read about it.
But I think
at the end of the day,
do you like it?
The end.
You know, we've taken the time
to educate ourselves,
not because it's our duty,
but because
I want to learn more.
So if I'm gonna learn more,
I'm gonna make sure
that I share it more.
And that's
the great part about wine
is there's
still so much learning
that can happen.
Nobody says when--
when Lady Gaga releases her--
her new song, nobody says,
"You know, if you took a class
in music appreciation,
you would get
so much more out of this song."
It's just not what happens,
but somehow we think
people need to get educated
and the truth is they don't,
they need to
have fun with wine.
And once you start having fun
with wine,
you'll be fine.
You know,
wine is stigmatized
and it has been for,
well, a long time.
It certainly is now.
And, um...
I-- I think--
I think there's room
to take it
a little less seriously.
[friend] Okay. Okay.
Just-- if you could just,
maybe a little bit more relaxed.
Like if you-- it's just, like,
the end of the day,
you're taking
your shoes off.
Yeah, shoes.
Cuddled up
with my robe and cats.
[chuckles] I'm so relaxed.
[friend] What's going on
with your eye there?
My eye?
Oh, is it? I'm sorry.
Uh... [laughs]
-[friend] [indistinct]
-I-- I'm-- I'm relaxed.
[laughs maniacally]
So relaxed.
So, yeah, relaxed.
-[friend] Shake it all out.
-Mm-hmm.
-[friend] Shake it.
-Yeah.
[friend]
Maybe a little more.
Uh, I'm good.
[friend]
And maybe the hands?
Oh, sorry, sorry.
It's a nervous...
-[friend] Aha!
-Oh, you got me.
[Jim] I think we can
understand why our experts
would say that
wine isn't too complicated
and they're right that
the only thing that matters
is if you like it.
But if you're someone
who wants to get into it
a little bit more,
it can be frustrating.
Think of it like getting into
a new band.
How do you do that?
Well, you hear one song
that you like
and then you spread out
through
that artist's catalog
and then you look for
other similar artists
and then your feed fills up
with songs
you can't bear to listen to
because the algorithm
is a disease.
Now, imagine
if your city, state,
and federal governments
all put controls
on what bands
were available at what time
with overlapping
and conflicting laws
all over the place.
As soon as you found
one song you like,
you'd never see it again.
That's how wine feels
to me sometimes.
Hello.
Hi, I'm the owner
of this fine wine shop.
Can I help you
find anything?
I love a good cab.
-Oh, of course.
-I was looking for that--
Was there anything specific
that you're looking for?
Yeah. As long as
it's a cabernet and drinkable,
I'll have it.
Oh, no, no, no, no,
I really--
I'm just gonna rip
this band-aid right off.
-What?
-Uh, cabernet doesn't exist.
The whole grape?
I'm telling you,
I will be honest with you.
I assure you,
cabernets are not a real thing.
You know what?
I heard rumors of that
on Reddit.
What? How did I not know?
I mean, I always said it--
Big Wine
doesn't want you to know.
Well, what about this?
It's empty.
So that's more, uh,
of our, uh, air wine.
[Jim]
How did it get this way?
Well, my friends,
let me tell you about
a little thing called
prohibition.
In 1920,
after passing the 18th Amendment
and the Volstead Act,
the US went completely dry.
To this day,
the debate rages over
whether it was a good idea
and whether
the effects were positive
but it wasn't
and they weren't.
Now, given that I'm neither
a physician nor an economist,
I am not qualified to make
the following two assertions.
-But since I'm a comedy writer--
-[program interruption beeping]
If health
is your primary concern,
you should avoid alcohol
and sugar and sitting down.
-[explosion booms]
-[woman cries out]
Now having said that,
please know
if you're currently sitting down
enjoying sugar and alcohol,
you are my people
and I love you.
Banning something for which
there is still supply and demand
will probably go wrong.
Because booze
is relatively easily made,
the US had a very hard time
controlling the supply
of alcohol during prohibition.
Imagine
if they tried to ban something,
a plant, for example,
that grows
right out of the ground
almost anywhere and requires
very little post-processing.
I mean, if you can, imagine.
[woman shouting] Yay!
[Jim]
The 21st Amendment repealed
the 18th Amendment
and ended prohibition.
Before prohibition,
there was such a thing
as tied houses which were bars,
owned and operated
by the Big US Brewers.
Imagine the way the US suburbs
are carpeted today
with fast food restaurants
all clustered together
and you'll have some idea
of how common
and huddled together
the tied houses used to be.
We didn't want to go back
to the tied houses system.
So after prohibition,
we came up with something else.
The three-tier system.
Importers slash producers,
distributors and retailers.
In some states,
the state government operates
as some of the tiers,
and counties can also have
their own sale
and distribution laws.
Distributors territories
sometimes include
multiple counties
or parts of counties.
On the other hand,
to be fair to the folks
who came up with this system
almost 100 years ago,
well, it was almost
100 years ago.
Things are different now.
A great problem
that we have today is that
all wine is pretty good.
Because of food safety standards
and equipment advances,
the most modestly priced wines
year-round
are on par with the best
anyone ever drank
just a few generations ago.
I had a hard time
getting a handle
on what aging wine
did for the taste.
Of course, as always,
your local wine expert
can help you here.
But there's also a wine region
that has made it very simple,
Rioja.
Rioja's four color-coded
classification levels
make it easy to put together
a group of bottles
by the same maker,
from the same region,
using roughly
the same techniques.
So the effect of aging
becomes more clear.
I think that, you know,
one of the benefits
of understanding
the Spanish system,
and even
at its most basic level,
the Rioja system,
is that it's very easy,
if you know
those three levels,
to know that your wine
has been aged in oak.
And has also been required
to have been aged in the bottle
for a period of time.
[Jim] So if you, like me,
often taste red wine and think,
"Yes, that's red wine,"
lining up a few bottles
like this is a great way
to get a foothold
in being able to taste aging.
Let's dig a little bit deeper
into Rioja's history.
We've mentioned
the early Mediterranean peoples
like the Greeks and the Romans.
And Rioja's
earliest wine-growing history
can be traced back
to them as well.
Rioja has been producing wine
since the Phoenicians
were there.
Around
the middle of the 18th century,
you had a guy who actually
went to Bordeaux.
And he saw that
they were using barrels there.
[glass shattering]
They came back to Rioja,
and because
there were restrictions
on how much they could charge
for wine at the time,
it became too cost-prohibitive
for them to actually be able
to incorporate
the use of barrels
because
barrels are very expensive.
I mean, they are today.
But even back then,
even more so.
And so that never happened.
[Jim] So Rioja's first
flirtation with oak barrels
didn't work out long-term,
but it would
by no means be the last.
About 50 years later,
there was a small
disagreement in Spain.
It was about who should
ascend to the throne
-when King Ferdinand VII died.
-[Ferdinand's portrait groans]
Ferdinand left instructions
on how he should be succeeded.
But his brother, Don Carlos said
those instructions were invalid
because Ferdinand's
proposed heir was female.
[woman screams]
Ferdinand's daughter,
Isabella II,
did indeed rise to the throne.
But since she was just
three years old at the time,
the affairs of state
were handled by a regent.
One of those
was Baldomero Espartero.
Espartero defended Isabella's
claim to the throne vigorously
against her enemies,
the Carlists.
He was so vigorous in fact,
that when Isabella was of age
to take full control
of her throne,
Espartero decamped to London
to cool off for a few years.
He took his aide Marietta
with him.
While in London,
Espartero and Marrieta saw
how much wine Bordeaux
was selling in England.
As landowners
and winemakers themselves,
they saw opportunity.
So, Marrieta
went to Bordeaux to learn
and bring that knowledge
back to Rioja.
The result
was a big jump in quality.
And then they were learning
winemaking techniques
from the-- the Bordelaise.
And when they came back,
that's when
they really instituted
um, and really started
to see more of the usage of oak.
[Jim] Rioja got
another lucky break
in the middle 19th century
when their vines fared well
against Phylloxera,
compared
to neighboring regions.
Lots of wine producers
from Bordeaux,
where Phylloxera halted
nearly everything,
moved to Rioja and the industry
grew even further.
Then you saw a lot of winemakers
from France
that actually
crossed the border.
A lot of Bordelaise
in particular
that crossed the border
and brought techniques
with them.
And of course, one of their
most important techniques
were-- was the use of barrel.
So that's--
that's why you see
this really strong connection
between Bordeaux
and-- and-- and Rioja.
[Jim] As usual
in 20th-century Western Europe,
everything was interrupted
by a couple of wars.
But in recent decades,
Rioja has, again,
clawed its way back
to the forefront of wine.
[upbeat jazz music]
[Jim] When we last
talked about the US,
it was providing rootstock
to help keep
European wines alive
under the threat of Phylloxera
at the end of the 19th century.
A few decades after that
came prohibition,
which was
an unqualified success.
When prohibition was lifted,
the American wine business
could return to normal.
[overwhelming buzzing]
But it experienced
a moment of existential ennui.
Sure, the shadow
of prohibition was gone,
but the long shadow
of the great European wines
remained and the US vintners
were still in it.
American wine
at the time was a mess.
The work that the Cistercians
had done for Burgundy and wine
back in the 12th century
had never been done
in California.
But to be fair,
California is huge.
Way too big
to traipse up and down it,
picking the grapes, studying
the soil and the climate,
making hundreds,
thousands of batches of wine,
and cataloging all results.
But in 1935 Albert Winkler
and Maynard Amerine
went on and did it anyway.
World War II had just ended
and while people liked to drink,
they were also very familiar
with European doings.
Winkler advocated for a way
to break the European mold
in America.
Why should American
wine producers
be producing a Bordeaux?
Why not find
the best grape for your land
then make the best wine
you can from that grape?
Maybe instead of Loir drinkers
or Tuscan drinkers,
people could become
Chardonnay drinkers
or Pinot Noir?
Maybe even,
and I recommended it, Merlot.
Why should anyone who loves
Oregon Pinots
know even where Oregon is?
All you got to know...
is that you liked it.
[Jim] It would be decades
before the work Winkler
and Amerine did
was emphatically proven right
at the Judgment of Paris
when two American wines
were judged the winners
alongside the best of France.
Not much has been
said about the event,
so we'll leave it alone,
but for sure American wine
found its voice
and was at last
in full song.
So that more or less
brings us up to date.
Now, let's talk about
where we're going
and what we've learned.
I'm a little bit
worried about wine.
I don't think
it's going away,
but I do think
the industry faces big changes.
Wine doesn't happen overnight.
You can't just, like,
put some grapes in the ground
and then the next thing
you know,
you-- you have, like,
a thing that you can sell
and we can drink it.
You know, it takes years
and years and years
to build up that
and that's gonna be--
that's gonna be crushed
for a lot of people.
The-- the places
that haven't been doing the best
will-- will start
to come into the forefront.
New areas will be, you know,
kind of like your go-tos,
and places that we see
as the classic style of wine
will start to,
kind of not saying fall apart,
but they're gonna fall apart.
Like if we keep seeing fires
and hail and drought
and floods,
like, we're not gonna
have these places
to talk about anymore.
[Jim]
The Riojas, the Bordeaux?
The Riojas, the Bordeaux.
Riojas' not going anywhere.
Bordeaux, but Bordeaux--
It could become
too hot in Spain,
you know,
or it could become too wet
or there could be
that one hail storm
that finally wipes out Burgundy.
Like, you know, you just
never know what's gonna happen.
And I think those places
that we know to make
fantastic wines
are not gonna be--
they're gonna be more expensive,
of course, the quality
is not going to be the same.
Um, and we're going to find
alternative places to go.
I think from
a technical perspective,
the answers are the same today
as they were
for the Cistercians,
the Lavoisiers, the Winklers,
the Pasteurs,
everybody
who impacted this story.
You know, they surmounted
their challenges and we can too.
And maybe we can do it in a way
that doesn't come off
as too pretentious.
We turn now
to the Gospel of Gil Kulers.
Take it away Gil.
And there are folks
who really are sort of haughty
and they-- they make you think
that you're not good enough
to appreciate a wine like this.
[organ music playing]
Man, that really bothers me.
That's the thing
that I really fight against
because wine comes--
since it's 8,000 years old,
it's the sacrament.
It's all these other things.
It's a big, big subject.
It already has
its image issues.
It's already stigmatized,
and then you come along
with your tie
and your little testament.
And you have that body language
and you're sort of
judging someone
and deciding that
they can't possibly enjoy...
this type of wine.
I'm not allowed to curse, am I?
[Jim] Yeah, you're allowed
to do whatever you want.
You can go to heck.
Um...
[Jim] Is that cursing?
It is when I grew up.
Amen.
Now, one thing I've learned
while making this film
is that wine experts serve
a very important role.
If you're listening,
they'll give you a little story
to take with you, with your wine
wherever you're going.
So for example,
when you show up to the party,
as you're handing
the bottle to the host,
you can say, "Oh, yeah,
I thought that one
was very interesting.
It's biodynamic.
It's a seventh-generation
winemaker,
all female-owned, whatever."
You didn't know
that shit, man.
You got it
from your wine expert.
And that's okay.
Remember to take
that little story with you.
It's the most important part
of your interaction
with your wine expert.
But here's
the most important thing
that I learned about wine
while making this film.
And I invite you to check
my math by trying this yourself.
I asked a lot of people about
the best wine that they ever had
and they all answered
in a similar way.
They begin
by describing the setting.
What time of year it was,
what country they were in,
what the weather was like,
what friends
and loved ones were around.
But here's the crazy thing.
Often they forget to mention
the nitpicky wine stuff
like grape and vintage.
I don't think it's possible
to talk about the best wine
you ever had without describing
the setting and the company.
So what does all this mean?
Well, it means that
when we're looking for wine,
what we're looking for
is not the bottle.
We're looking for
that moment
when all the other stuff
comes together.
A wine could be
part of that moment,
but it doesn't have to be.
Now, all this stuff about
vintages and terroir
is interesting.
But if you really want to
enjoy wine,
keep good people around you,
be open to new experiences,
and if you're having
a great experience,
make sure to notice.
Oh, and make sure
to invite me.
[upbeat jazz music]
[music fades]