SOMM11

With the imminent release of SOMM11, I thought it would be useful to briefly recap the first ten films in the series. The franchise shows no signs of tiring, unlike most of its featured wine personalities.

SOMM
The now dated debut of the series, SOMM follows six candidates for the Court of Master Sommeliers as they try to pass their exams. The movie made Fred Dame MS a household name, like Preparation H. If he doesn’t shrink your tissue, nothing will.

SOMM2
A love letter to winemakers, vineyards, and, most of all, the director of the films. It follows up on four of the six candidates from SOMM, all of whom are about as memorable as wetnaps. In fact, most usually settle for wet naps. It features a memorable scene of Fred Dame MS drinking a rare bottle of wine with Leon Panetta after the death of Osama Bin Laden. Ironically, the film reveals, Bin Laden had just passed his Level One WSET—Wine and Spirits Education for Terrorists.

SOMM3
Focused around the endlessly overrated Paris Tasting of 1976, the director assembled a cast of “legendary” palates Fred Dame, Jancis Robinson and Steven Spurrier. These palates are legendary to wine tasting in the same way Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed are legendary to horse racing—wondrous, but long dead. Burgundies are tasted blind alongside New World Pinot Noirs by the Three Anosmics, and their results are compared to the results of a panel of young, trendy, similarly pretentious sommeliers. Hilarity ensues when the Burgundies are revealed to be from the cellar of Rudi Kurniawan! However, the only fake spotted by the experts is Madeline Puckette, who hosts the film because, apparently, the only other logical host, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was busy that week having her tongue forked.

SOMM4
Alice Feiring stars in this biopic of biodynamics creator Rudolf Steiner in this episode about Natural Wines. The film attempts to answer the question, “Why are all the con men in wine named Rudi?” Pascaline Lepaltier co-stars as the voice of manure. Fred Dame is buried in a cow horn.

SOMM5
Explored the influence of wine critics and publications. Unable to get interviews with most of the influential critics, the director substituted puppets. Except for Suckling, who already was one and everybody knew it. Shot on a small budget, castoff puppets from other films were used. Fans were shocked at Parker portrayed by Jabba the Hutt, as well as Chucky playing James Molesworth. Though there’s a nice interview with Wallace and Gromit, who turn out to be Andrew Jefford and, inexplicably, Eric Asimov. A visibly tattered Mortimer Snerd is Fred Dame.

SOMM6
The only musical of the series, SOMM6 is “My Fair Lady” recast as a film about wine, and stars the director, in his first film role, as the Henry Higgins character, with Madeline Puckette as Eliza Doolittle. Eliza has the show stopper with her spirited rendition of “I Could Have Puked All Night;” and Professor Higgins delights with “The Rain in Spain Brings Mildew to Champagne.” The film is based on Shaw’s “Fredmalion,” and involves Henry Higgins MS teaching novice Eliza (Puckette) enough about wine for her to pass as an expert.

SOMM7
Inspired by “The Magnificent Seven,” SOMM7 is the tale of seven Master Sommeliers who are hired by a Mexican village to protect them from a band of savage wine bloggers. Arriving in the village, the seven Master Somms immediately eliminate the women. Duh. Outnumbered by the bloggers, and armed with only Coravins and lapel pins, the seven somms put up a courageous fight. Happily, in the end, everyone dies. The Mexicans decide to build a wall.

SOMM8
Somm8 was the first film in this series about the wine world to feature an all African-American cast. Running time is eleven minutes. Fred Dame sings the title song as Barry White. Madeline Puckette has a graph proving she’s black.

SOMM9
A look at the role of women in the wine industry, SOMM9 is the most controversial film of the series. Narrated by Jay McInerney, who opens the film by declaring, “Hashtag MeToo? Hell, I thought it said Pound MeToo! Mea culpa, gals, mea maxima culpa.” The film follows six attractive young women who pursue various jobs in the wine business—winemaker, sommelier, wine critic, wine writer—and illustrates just how hilarious it is they’d even try. Three of the women end up as Jagermeister girls, two go on to wonderful careers as permanent interns at glossy wine publications, while one finds happiness in the arms of a Master Sommelier—as close as she’ll get to a pin.

SOMM10
SOMM10 looks at how climate change will affect the great wine regions of the world, and what scientists are doing to try to help. In Napa, researchers are trying to develop a clone of Cabernet that will make balanced wine when picked at 40 Brix. In the lab, they’re exposing Cabernet Bosché clone to excessive heat by packing it into Tim Fish’s pants. The results are promising, though there’s milt everywhere. In Chablis, vineyards have been victimized by extreme weather in many recent vintages, primarily by ferocious hail storms. Botanists are trying to create Chardonnay that grows a canopy like umbrellas. Every spring, the vineyards will be full of bumbershoots. If they succeed, growers in Chablis will be happy. Realistically, it’s a hail merry. Fred Dame appears as a natural disaster.

Blind Movie Review--"Somm"

“Somm” is probably the worst movie I haven’t seen this year. Though anything with Morgan Freeman is a close second. That guy will do anything for a paycheck. Hell, he’d be a perfect somm. In fact, now that I think about it, all “Somm” needs is Morgan Freeman, perhaps as Andrea Immer-Robinson, to whom he bears a passing resemblance. I made a point of not viewing “Somm” for this review, and I’m glad I did. Too much emphasis is placed on actually viewing a movie before you review it, discovering what the movie is about, its subject matter and plotlines, its story development, its director and its stars. Reviewing a film blind is far more objective. It removes any prejudices I may have brought to the screening. I think you’ll agree that blind movie reviewing is the best way to get to the core of the film, and the best way to evaluate it. Hard to imagine a sommelier could disagree, at least.

Let’s begin with the title. Why “Somm” and not “Sommelier?” Were they worried about the number of letters on the theater marquee? Hell, it won’t be up there more than a week. Or is it because Americans are incapable of pronouncing “sommelier?” Well, that’s the truth. I used to hear “som-lee-ay,” and “som-a-lay” and “prik.” But I always think "somm" is a bit derogatory, a bit diminishing. And it’s not consistent throughout the film, from what I made up in my head. For example, no one calls Fred Dame simply, “Dil.” Is he even in the movie? If he is, I loved Linda Hunt’s performance as the old M.S.

“Somm” follows a bunch of guys as they attempt to pass the legendarily difficult Master Sommelier exam. It seems few women attempt the exam, which explains the absence of stirrups. The film has the obligatory time-lapse shots of clouds passing over vineyards (a symbol, I suppose, of the fleeting nature of time and the irrelevance of what these bozos are doing—either that, or the clouds look like ponies), as well as more time-lapse photography of vineyards going from dormant, to sprouting leaves like the Jolly Green Giant’s pubic hair, to being laden with grapes and, finally, to being harvested by Jolly Brown Dwarves, who wouldn’t know a somm from la migra except the somm’s shoes are dirtier. What this has to do with four dweebs cramming their pickled brains with wine facts escapes me. It’s said that maybe only 1 in 50 manage to pass the M.S. exam. So it’s exactly like the Miss America Pageant, only these guys don’t need to have a talent or a Brazilian.

If you don’t know that much about wine, much of what is discussed by the four candidates may seem like gibberish to you. It is, actually. I mean, look at those dorks, you know English is their third language, after Elvish and Klingon. The boys talk in short hand about the general character of a variety of grape varieties. This might come in handy the next time you feel like a dinner guest has overstayed his welcome. For example, we learn that Viognier has the characteristic smell of “Nathan Lane’s Wet-Nap.” Zinfandel can be pegged to “I threw up a little Pop-Tart in my mouth.” Seyval Blanc reminds the boys of “Melissa McCarthy’s landing strip.” A round of Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noirs yields the descriptor “Don Knotts.” And Syrah is given away by its distinctive aroma of “Bev-Mo 5¢ Sale.” There’s way too much of this kind of babbling in the film, but it does accurately reflect the kind of secret lingo that prevails in the wine world. When it comes down to it, it isn’t knowing wine that really matters, it’s knowing how to speak the language of wine that fools people into thinking you’re a wine expert. Con men always learn to talk the talk first.

But along the way, as we watch the guys sit around and drink thousands of dollars worth of wine, spit profusely, and expect their wives to clean up (are they becoming sommeliers or Arab princes?), we start to fall in love with them and their obsessive pursuit of an M.S. They’re likable enough guys, in the way all self-absorbed, narcissistic men are--think Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson with tastevins. The filmmaker, pity that guy who had to sit through endless hours of tastings with those bores, manages the nearly impossible task of making the audience root for these guys; though it’s to fail, of course.

The M.S. exam consists of three parts. The service exam is perhaps the easiest of the three. The boys have to learn how to smoothly upsell a wine list (“Really, domestic sparkling wine for her birthday? Planning on riddling yourself later?”), pour just enough wine in the first three glasses so the host’s glass is only half-full, remember to not take phone calls from annoying wine salespeople (“Remind her I only taste with winemakers or other M.S.’s”), and show up drunk for work. No one fears this part of the exam, or the second part, which entails a scholarly essay on some esoteric part of the wine business. One of the boys fails when he states that “Phylloxera is the capital of Pennsylvania.” It’s Harrisburg, moron.

It’s the third part of the exam that the boys spend the film fearing—the blind tasting. A candidate has to taste six wines blind in 25 minutes and identify them with no other clues besides how they smell and taste. The wine could be made from any of the thousands of grape varieties, and could be from anywhere in the world. Passing this portion of the exam is the most difficult part, and, as with any good exam, it’s a gift a sommelier will never make use of again. In what other test is the passing grade dependent on a party trick? You only have to do it once to get the result you want. Basically, it's like erotic asphyxiation done right. It's at this point in the film that the suspense builds. We’ve watched our heroes taste countless wines, crack endless wise, cry, wet the bed, call Jancis Robinson and breathe heavily, dance with Chaz Bono for good luck, stick pins in their Larry Stone voodoo doll (actual size), and swordfight with Erectile Dysfunction victims. All that for those two letters after their names.

Yeah, that seems worth it.