RKS 2023 Wine:  It Seems Portugal’s Alentejo is Coming on Strong

Is there an offensive launched by Portugal’s Alentejo region these days in Ontario? Is the Douro taking it on the chin? Alentejano reds completely outnumber whites and while they may utilize mostly indigenous grapes the Alicante Bouschet grape features predominantly in the red blends. Alicante Bouschet is a cross of Grenache and Petit Bouschet crossed in France by Henri Bouschet in the mid 1880’s. It is thick skinned, a high yielder and deeply coloured. Alicante Bouschet has been used for decades in Southern France to give light red wines more colour.

In this instance we have a Terra Lenta red being a blend of Trincadeira, Aragonez and Alicante Bouschet.

Aroma: Blackberry, red cherry, cactus pear, blueberry with a hint of milk chocolate.

Palate: Moderate broad-based tannins. Tight structure. Tightly wound fruit. Blueberry, pomegranate and a titch of dark chocolate and a peppery twist.

Personality: Effusive personality if you judge me by aroma alone. Once I splash on your tounge I clam up and hide my fruit like a drug trafficker desperately flushing down his dope when the police battering ram strikes his door.

Food Match: Canned salmon and 35% cream added to a sauce of garlic, scallions, caned tomatoes, basil, oregano and vodka just before that sauce is fully cooked. I used to use smoked salmon but wild Alaskan canned salmon is just as good if not better believe it or not.

Cellarbility: Can’t see any improvement with age. Drink before 2025.

Price: $13.95 (Ontario).

RKS 2023 Wine Rating: 90/100. Rod Phillips 91/100.

(Terra Lenta Premium Vinho Tinto 2020, Alentejo D.O.C. , Carmim, Reguenos de Monsaraz, Portugal, 750 mL, 14.5%, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 646083).

RKS 2023 Film: “Americonned”

The American documentary “Americonned” is an attack on the tiered economic system of the United States which is tilted heavily in favour the rich and highlights those attempting initiatives to “even out” the disparities in that system. The Bezos, Musk, Branson romps of the obscenely rich versus the unemployed and struggling! The goal of many is to build a fair and equitable society in the face of a widening gap of the monied oligarchy and those struggling to put food on the table. The optimum way is set forth as a rah rah for unionization. One example is the unionization of Amazon’s Staten Island, New York distribution centre. The first union Amazon has ever dealt with in its workforce.

The documentary looks at the history of unionization and the direction in which it is heading. Economists, academics, authors, political activists, the struggling victims of the economy and even a venture capitalist all stating the current system in inequitable and must change given “globalization” artificial intelligence, automation, the stalemate of American national politics, the gig economy and more. There is a huge amount of archival footage!

In case you don’t know it Big Business plays dirty and have been doing so for years failing to understand if they fail to adequately compensate employees the day may come when there is another insurrection in Washington this time of the economically displaced and if matters go off the rails armed conflict. Didn’t Roosevelt’s New Deal make more sense and show a degree of compassion than space romps of billionaires! Are the rich the purveyors of the big con?

“Americonned” will have a United States’ theatrical release on 9June and a VOD release in North America on 13 June.

You can see the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zLqjJzDm8o

Directed by Sean Claffey.

RKS 2023 Film Rating 86/100.

RKS Literature: A Russian’s View of Politics

“He, to whom so called politics (that ridiculous sequence of pacts, conflicts, aggravations, frictions, discords, collapses and the transformation of perfectly innocent little towns into the names of international treaties) meant nothing, would sometimes immerse himself into the vast bowels of Vasilev and live for an instant actuated by his, Vasilev’s inner mechanism where next to the “Locarno” button there was one for “Lockout” and where a pseudo-clever, pseudo entertaining game was conducted by such ill-hatched symbols as “the Five Kremlin Leaders” or “The Kurd Rebellion” or individual surnames that had lost all human connotations: Hindenburg, Marx, Painlevé, Herriot….. this was a world of prophetic utterances, presentiments, mysterious combinations; a world that was a hundredfold more spectral than the most abstract dream.”

Vladimir Nabokov, “The Gift”, 1962.

RKS 2023 Wine: Primarius Oregonian Pinot Noir: Meaty and Intellectual?

I reviewed an Iranian-French film last night, titled “Subtraction” and my take was that it was meaty and intellectual as to content. Can a wine be meaty and intellectual?

I have had a few wines that have had some meatiness to them often with notes of smoked meat. It is interesting that both red wines and smoked meat contain nitrates! One red wine from British Columbia I had years ago from Hester Creek reeked of hot dogs. Sulfuric overload!  Meaty can also mean dense and chewy.

I am not certain a wine can be intellectual however if we interpret a highly nuanced and complicated wine of which there are many yes a wine can be intellectual. Additionally think of all the decisions that have to be made about, pruning, fermenting, ageing, blending and clonal selection wine has a huge intellectual component.

After digressing over the best film I have reviewed this year I suppose it is time to review a Primarius 2020 Oregonian Pinot Noir.

Aroma: A very muscular Pinot Noir with none of those delicate raspberry and strawberry notes one might expect from an Okanagan Pinot Noir. Oregonian Pinot Noirs are a little weightier than those Okanagan Pinot Noirs but this one tips the scale making it difficult to categorize it as a Pinot Noir. Bits of raspberry and strawberry scattered about like a bad motor vehicle accident. No meat on the nose just an abundance of rawness!

Palate: Just rawness with almost no fruit except for some eloquent black cherry thrashing about like an Iranian theocrat sentencing a protestor to death by hanging but yes some smoked brisket.

Food Pairing: Will some fatty smoked meat on rye revive this wine?

Cellarbility: If you are going to drink this do it now. Unless some blessing from the big ayatollah will rescue it from perdition.

Price: $26.95 (Ontario).

RKS 2023 Wine Rating: 74/100. Eric Asimov of New York Times 4 out of 5 stars

(Primarius 2020 Pinot Noir, Oregon, Primarius Winery, Dundee, Oregon, 750 mL, 13.2%, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 402180).

RKS 2023 Wine: More Good Ontario Gamay? Di Profio 2019 Gamay Noir

Aroma: Cherry, raspberry and a bit of mocha. Simple and delightful.

Palate: Modest tannins. Light and smooth with Niagara cherry, blackberry, almonds and a bit of red pepper jelly. Short finish.

Personality: OK I might not be bursting with fruit on the palate but essentially I am nonchalant and easy going. Perhaps I have a bit too much oak. Excuse me.

Food Pairing: Mussels in a tomato, chorizo sausage, red wine, scallion and basil sauce with Portuguese cornbread for mopping up the broth.

Cellarbility: Drink now.

Price: $22 (Ontario).

RKS 2023 Wine Rating: 86/100.

(Di Profio 2019 Gamay Noir, VQA Creek Shores (Mia Cara Vineyard), Di Profio Estate Wines Incorporated, Jordan Station, Ontario, 750 mL, 12.7%).

RKS 2023 Film: “Subtraction”: Riders on the Storm and “Rear Window”

Watching the French-Iranian film “Subtraction” I think of Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock’s 1954 “Rear Window”. Why?

If you watch this film keep this refrain from the Door’s song “Riders on the Storm” in mind:

“There’s a killer on the road
His brain is squirmin’ like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If you give this man a ride
Sweet family will die
Killer on the road, yeah”

The easy part of the film is its beginning. Farzaneh (Taraneh Alidoosti) spots a man on a bus in Tehran whom she believes to be her husband Jalal (Navid Mohammadzadeh) disembarking and entering an apartment building. From the road outside the apartment building she sees this man talking with a woman by the window. Jalal vehemently denies it was him. In fact he was at a bank outside of the city centre from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. the day he supposedly disembarked from the bus.

Jalal visits the apartment and finds a woman Bita looking almost exactly like Farzaneh and not only that as matters transpire her husband Mohsen looks identical to Jalal! Mohsen is an aggressive and violent man. Yes Director Mani Haghighi is starting to play with our minds!

Farzaneh is on anti-depressants and suffers from anxiety and after believing Jalal’s denial he was not the man on the bus starts thinking she is having hallucinations. Yes viewer you may want to ask if the whole series of events is a hallucination! And you may be right.

Matters become more complicated and chance and circumstance take charge to the point you may be like a spectator with your mouth open at the twists and turns in the plot. You may feel like Jimmy Stewart in “Rear Window” glued to the film like it is a window with a potential murderer on the other side of it.

Both a grisly and puzzling ending. Who is who? This must be an hallucination! Right?

All the Iranian non-documentary directed films I have seen take a jab at the theocracy but often in an allegorical way. As Canadian-Iranian director Haghighi states, “Living in a theocracy splits you in two. You must become two people to survive. A private life, and a public mask. The split seeps into the narrowest crevices of your life, and your every cell produces a simulacrum of itself: a copy that looks just like you. You produce this copy to protect yourself from the brutality around you. You produce this copy to protect yourself from the brutality around you, but it can turn against you and destroy you.”

And yes don’t forget the never-ending “rain” in Tehran even when sunny. Get the hint?

“Subtraction” opens in Canada on June 23, 2023.

RKS 2023 Film Rating 96/100.

RKS Literature: “Zorba the Greek”: Splendid Ierapetra Wine

“We clinked our glasses and drank. Splendid Ierapetra wine, as black as hare’s blood. When you drank, it was though you were receiving earth-blood as Holy Communion. You flourished. Your veins were filled to the brim with strength, your heart with kindness: if you were a coward, you became brave: if you were already brave you became a wild untamed monster. You forgot humble trifles; narrow borders broke down; you joined with humans, animals, God-becoming one with everything.”

Nikos Kazantzakis, “Zorba the Greek”, 1947.

RKS 2023 Wine Tourism: What is Wine Tourism?

I attended Wine and Tourism Week in Porto, Portugal last February. Having attended many wine shows both in North America and Europe my mind was more focused on wine but Wine and Travel Week shifted that focus where the theme was the interrelationship between wine, gastronomy, accommodations and culture. Combine all those elements together and you have wine tourism. A perfect symbiotic relationship where wine is an important but not a sole component.

Aside from Pico Island grapes there is a tea planation there as well!

At Wine and Travel Week exhibitors were not pouring any wine! They were promoting wine tourism. The moral compass of this event as I saw it was to escape the “tyranny of the beach and sun”. Sure hit the beach but why not stop at a winery for a tasting and some top rate food! Perhaps even stay at a winery or nearby. And stop and visit cultural sites while you are at it. Not that sun and beach is bad or for that matter simply focusing on wine at wineries. But there is more!

Nouvelle cuisine at Azores Wine Company on Pico Island! Photo Robert K. Stephen

Let me give you an example. The Wine and Travel Week conference was at the Alfândega which is the old custom’s house an historic building in Porto. At Wine and Travel Week we experienced two gastronomic lunches prepared by top Portuguese chefs and many bottles of wine selected to suit that food. One lunch was surf and the other turf. A gala dinner was at Museu do Carro Electrico (Electric Tram Museum). And then 10 of us flew to Pico Island in the Azores. I had an ultra hip room at the Azores Wine Company where we also tasted wines and ate some awesome nouvelle cuisine. We visited several wineries and ate local dishes at two of them. We visited the Pico Island Wine Museum, a national park, a distillery and stopped for a seaside walk. So we had wine, culture and gastronomic feasts both homey and hipster!

You will not be crabby eating this Pico Island crab! Photo Robert K. Stephen

The result was a fuller understanding of Pico Island and a desire to return and give it the two weeks as a minimum it deserves. I understand its topography, some of its history, its food, its culture and its wines. There is more to life than a beach!

Sadly there was virtually no North American presence amongst the media invitees nor any North American exhibitors. Wake up and smell the coffee and get there next year for Wine and Travel Week. Canadian wineries are great at wine tourism so why don’t they tell the rest of the world about it?

RKS 2023 Film: “The Eight Mountains”: Travel the Eight Mountains and Seas or Climb the Mountain in the Centre of it All?

Based on the novel by Paolo Cognetti, “The Eight Mountains”, a 2022 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize winner, is the story of a friendship. Of children becoming men who try to erase the footprints of their fathers, but who, through the twists and turns they take, always end up returning home. Pietro (Luca Marinelli) is a boy from Turin. Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) is the last child of a forgotten Italian mountain village of Grana. Over the years Bruno remains faithful to his mountain, while Pietro is the one who comes and goes. Their encounters introduce them to love and loss, reminding them of their origins, letting their destinies unfold, as Pietro and Bruno discover what it means to be true friends for life.

Bruno and Pietro, both 12, meet in Grana. Bruno is living with his aunt and uncle in Grana while Pietro is the only child of a teacher and engineer from Turin who rent a summer residence in Grana in the mountains of Valle D’ Aosta in Italy so well captured by cinematographer Ruben Impens. They form a friendship that spans the entire film however not in a linear fashion.

As the boys mature both drift apart from their fathers yet at points they are exactly like their fathers.

The intellectual matrix of “The Eight Mountains” is based upon a man who approached Pietro on his trip to Nepal explaining that eight mountains and oceans formed the world with Mount Sumera in the middle with a question who has learnt more. The man that has travelled the eight mountains and eight oceans or who has climbed Mount Sumera. As a viewer you’ll make that decision!

One of the men loses himself in tragic fashion and the other finds himself after years of wandering through life. One of the men finds the father he drifted from although it is too late to tell his deceased father that he never should have shunned him. There may also be a question of Italy losing itself in a financial crisis and a traditional way of life.

The mountains surrounding Grana are the immovable centre of the film. Human relationships are the fluidity.

A memorable epic.

This Italian, French and Belgian film is 147 minutes in length and opened in Canada on May 19th. It is in Italian with either English or French subtitles. It is directed by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch.

RKS 2023 Film Rating 92/100.

RKS Literature: “Zorba the Greek”: Will God be Ashamed in Front of Zorba?

“I’m telling you Boss: all these things that happen here in this world are unjust, unjust, unjust! I don’t sign my approval, I the tiny worm, the slug, the Zorba. Why should young boys and girls die while decrepit oldsters remain? Why should small children die? I had a small child, my Dimitraki, and he died on me when he was three years old-and never, never (do you hear me?) will I forgive God! When I breathe my last, if he has the nerve to appear before me, you should know that, if he is truly God, he will be ashamed-yes ashamed before me, Zorba the slug.”

Nikos Kazantzakis ,“Zorba the Greek”, 1947.