For Your Consideration: Give That Wine An Oscar!
I recently saw Dean Spanley at the cinema and for the second year running found myself watching a movie that used that sweetest of Hungarian tipples, Tokaji, as a plot construct.
In this latest example, Fisk Junior (Jeremy Northam) shares a bottle of Tokaji with the Dean (Sam Neill) and discovers that his drinking companion starts to regress into a past life existence as a dog.
Intrigued, Northam arranges a succession of dinners with Neill, each time plying him with more Tokaji and each time eliciting more back-story about Neill’s adventures as a four legged hound.
Yes, that’s right folks, Tokaji is the drink of choice for mediums everywhere. Dean Spanley is a wonderful oddity of a shaggy dog story, but it’s not the first film to feature Tokaji….
Last year’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass also featured Katherine the Great’s elixir. This time out, Tokaji features as the sweetie of choice for Daniel Craig’s Lord Asriel. But wait! Who’s that adding poisoned powder to the Puttonyos? Oh no! The glass is poured. The arm is raised. The clasped goblet drives towards the eagerly awaiting mouth! Lyra – warn him! Don’t let him drink it!!!!. An awful movie, salvaged only by a sterling performance from the Hungarian.
I’ve blogged before about my favourite “wines featured in movies” but I wonder, dear reader, which wine would feature in the movie of your life?
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There would be a bottle of “The Lady” in every scene of my life! The Lady being Veuve Cliquot Posardin…fabulous history in every bottle!
Gold in color, crisp and dry, with a fine, persistent sparkle?!
Burgundy – all brooding sensuality, depth and mystery. Yes, that’s me. Or is it perhaps solid and dependable Claret? No, I know, Sauternes: sweet yet fresh and ageing beautifully. Scrap that. Aussie shiraz, all big, fat and alcoholic. This is hard! Oh God! Don’t say it’s rosé – the vinous tipple of the indecisive!
Clearly given yours and Francesca’s views there’s a blog post to be written about what’s the oddest thing you’ve mixed wine with….I remember once that someone cracked an egg into a glass of red and drunk it. Yuk.
Hmmmm, it would have to be a velvety, smooth Rioja. Fond memories of a few months spent in Spain and the first time I really got into drinking red… Oh, and many a night out drinking the region’s favourite night-time tipple, Calimucho. 50% Coca-Cola, 50% red wine – not half as rancid as it sounds!
Calimucho! Now that’s a drink that should go against everything I stand for, but there’s a part of me that really want
‘s to try it!!
Hmmm I would like to say this is a tricky question but its probably not at all. I think it would have to be a reasonably priced bottle of Prosecco, a bubbly for all occasions grand and simple……
Much like the movie of my life there would be lashings of fruity freshness and a lovely sparkle but perhaps some cheaper packaging…and not maturing very well at all…
I would like the movie to be filmed at night in the moodily lit back alley ways of Venice, by a film crew that have had one too many Bellini’s……….x
Well worth a try, I promise! But maybe after a few other drinks first…
On holiday in Croatia years ago, so long ago in fact it was still Yugoslavia, the locals all drank ‘MishMash’ – the local red mixed with orange Fanta. Delicious, but then again have you ever tried Croatian red? Bloody awful, thankfully it washed away the taste of the food (mainly cheap cuts of donkey – ‘you can have it anyway you like as long as it’s stewed’) which was even worse .
The university years would star Ernst and Julio and dare I say blossom hill – it was more quantity than quality back then.
Then along came the big beefy shiraz which was my first love and the deep dark blackberry cabernet of the Barossa which featured heavily in my sunny year in oz.
These days I have grown to love the softer touch of a nz pinot and the smoothness of a good Bordeaux and generally anything that Gavino brings round to dinner!
Ah! Mrs Holllow! I knew you when you were a Newman, in those dim and distant years when we thought that Lindemans was fine wine….! I look forward to sharing a bottle of something wonderful with you soon
Hmmmm a wine to feature in the movie of my life?…..it would have to be Amarone, extremely rich and powerful…….movies do have a tendency to stretch the truth somewhat!
I would have to say a big bold Aussie Shiraz from the barossa valley! Mainly because these are my favourite wines, and because it’s the movie of my life it’s all about me!!
Morning cuppa, followed by mid-morning tea break, afternoon tea, and then probably to break the monotony a little sweet sherry after dinner (I singled handedly kept Harveys and several old man pubs in business through Uni). For those light and fruity moments, a nice bottle of Demoiselle Brut.
Some would say a bottle of Blue Nun
It would have to be a 2.5 litre bottle of seriously sweet red Muscat (Hanepoot in South Africa), the only stuff I could afford at Uni in Cape Town.
Tasted delicious (then), left you with a splitting hangover and washed down a plate of grilled crayfish a treat. Many happy memories!
Again, it would have to be Tokaji Eszencia, the free run juice of the shriveled grapes.
Over the last two years, I’ve had an incredible experience not only tasting this wine, but researching a particular bottle of it as well.
Now, I’m working on a short story/book with the details, which are too lengthy to mention here.
As Hugh Johnson/Jancis Robinson stated in their “World Atlas of Wine” (6th edition), Tokaji, more than any other wine, rightly deserves the title of Legend.
Perhaps I’ll be buried with the bottle I’m researching, or at least a photo of it.