Any chance there will be discounted tickets available?
Verve Wine is delighted to present the one-night-only, San Francisco premiere of SOMM 3 on Thursday, October 25 at the Landmark Clay Theatre. The third installment of director Jason Wise’s popular documentary series, SOMM 3 follows three of the greatest legends in wine — Fred Dame, Jancis Robinson, and Steven Spurrier — as they meet to drink the rarest bottles of their careers in Paris. Meanwhile, Master Sommelier Dustin Wilson gathers some of the best blind tasters of today in New York to settle the age-old argument that originated at the 1976 Judgement of Paris. Both tastings result in surprising conclusions sure to disrupt our understanding of the wine world as we know it.
In addition to the film, General Admission ticket holders will have access to a pre-screening wine reception with the cast and crew and a post-screening Q&A moderated by San Francisco Chronicle wine critic Esther Mobley. VIP ticket holders are invited to an exclusive after-party to celebrate the film with some of its most notable figures at Verve Wine.
When: Thursday, October 25 at 6:00 pm
Where: Landmark Clay Theatre (2216 Fillmore Street). VIP ticket holders are invited join the cast and crew for an afterparty at Verve Wine (2358 Fillmore Street) at 9:30 pm.
Tickets: $95 for General Admission and $195 for VIP; available at somm3sf.splashthat.com
They held a screening about a week ago here in the Santa Ynez Valley and the writer was there for a Q and A along side Raj Parr, a recognizable somm worldwide and now a winemaker/owner himself with Domaine De La Cote, Evening Land and a few other projects. I was not able to make the screening but I did hear positive things about it. And spoiler alert - there was a ‘local wine’ down here that was very highly regarded in the movie . . .
It’s available on iTunes and Amazon now. Just watched it. Honestly, it was kindof a letdown. I was expecting something much more akin to recreating the Judgement of Paris. Instead, it seemed like more of a promotional video of some of the businesses of people from the first film.
The conclusions will not disrupt our understanding of the wine world as we know it.
The tasting centers around Pinot Noir (no spoiler there, they begin the movie saying as much). My issue is really around the selections of the wines that will be tasted. Putting a couple of Premier Crus (as top notch as they are) up against a selection of high end Pinots from around the world isn’t really doing justice to the Judgement of Paris. The wines themselves are revealed during the first half of the film, so there isn’t a lot of suspense. And the ending is about what I would have expected from a blind tasting. Still, it was good to see Robinson, Spurrier and Dame together in a room that I frequent often for wine events. Interesting sidenote: that is the same room that Spurrier held his 40th anniversary dinner of the JofP. I spoke with him quite a bit at that dinner, it was outstanding, even if it wasn’t blind.
Overall I found the first two films more interesting.
Different strokes I guess. I tried watching part of the first one but the characters were so non-engaging and their approach to wine was so alien to mine that I couldn’t relate.
More to the point though, there will never be another “Judgement of Paris”. That was a one-off after the US had basically shut down its fine wine industry. The idea that the US could make wine as good as anyone else was confirmed by the tasting. Today that’s not newsworthy at all - there’s great wine from many places in the world. And there are enough people on this board who have had enough wine to ensure that very few tastings done by someone somewhere are going to disrupt their understanding of the wine world.
For those who already put somms up on a pedestal, this will be a good movie to watch. For those who want to learn more about some domestic pinot producers who can go ‘toe to toe’ with Burgundy, at least according to the ‘experts’ in the movie, then it’s probably worth watching. For most others, it may not be that exciting . . .
It’s the latter where I feel it fails. Especially when they hand picked a wine from someone well known in the somm world, and put his wine up against some Premier Crus, without even touching the Grand Cru producers.
That is not what happened in the Judgement of Paris. In that blind tasting, they took the best of Bordeaux and put them up against other wines. Do a blind tasting that takes the best of Burgundy GC (with a couple years age) and put it up against other regions. That would be an interesting tasting.