Mondovino Director Jonathan Nossiter - Interview

[M_Smith]

Thanks for drawing our attention to this great interview. Some passages are riveting for me, e.g.,

Donati to me is kind of a classic example of exactly why the debate is dead between a modernist and a traditionalist. He’s both, of course, like anybody who’s progressive. He invited us to lunch; he lives in a modest house, with his wife and his daughter. We were stunned by one wine after another. My wife Paula asked him, ”You only charge 4€ for all these wines? Surely you could charge a little more without becoming an expensive, super-elitist wine”. He looked at Paula, and he said, ”Look, wine is, first of all, for everybody, and it should be made and sold for as democratic a price as possible. And second of all, most important for me, is that by selling my wine at 4€ a bottle I earn enough to pay my debts. I live well enough for me to be happy. What do I need more money for?” And then he passed a plate of luscious culatello from a prosciutto producer down the road and bit into a chunk of sweet parmigiano made by his neighbour.

[Keith_Levenberg]

Just picked up a copy of the book at the Strand even though it’s not out til next week.
Having just finished the first chapter, this is going to be a wonderful and important book. It’s exactly the kind of wine book I wish I could write.

[Greg_Pierce]

@M. Smith

Thanks for drawing our attention to this great interview. Some passages are riveting for me, e.g.,

Donati to me is kind of a classic example of exactly why the debate is dead between a modernist and a traditionalist. He’s both, of course, like anybody who’s progressive. He invited us to lunch; he lives in a modest house, with his wife and his daughter. We were stunned by one wine after another. My wife Paula asked him, ”You only charge 4€ for all these wines? Surely you could charge a little more without becoming an expensive, super-elitist wine”. He looked at Paula, and he said, ”Look, wine is, first of all, for everybody, and it should be made and sold for as democratic a price as possible. And second of all, most important for me, is that by selling my wine at 4€ a bottle I earn enough to pay my debts. I live well enough for me to be happy. What do I need more money for?” And then he passed a plate of luscious culatello from a prosciutto producer down the road and bit into a chunk of sweet parmigiano made by his neighbour.

What? Not insisting upon “whatever the market will bear”? What are you, some kind of commie-socialist?

[M_Smith]

Isn’t it rather ironic that, in this bear market (“Great Recession”), investment bankers and their ilk are, once again, the true welfare queens. Its also refreshing to be spared, for the moment at least, the tortured logic of those like Leve, who insisted that prices for certain wines had nowhere to go but up. I do however feel for many less-fortunate individuals and smaller outfits caught off guard, straining under an unexpected economic ‘re-set’.

The remarkable fact that Nossiter was allegedly vilified over on eBlob after Mondovino was released speaks volumes as well. Tides in the wine industry have certainly turned (as has my own focus, now more toward family-made wines from Italy). If I had only heeded Roberto’s pronouncements way back when.

[John_Morris]

FYI, the NY Times Book Review has a generally positive review of Nossiter’s book today, though it acknowledges his sometime irksome tendencies:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/books/review/Holt-t.html?_r=1&ref=books" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I love the summation:

Nossiter didn’t completely win me over. I still like a fruit bomb now and then. And I had to wince at some of his rhetorical flights, like “Without terroir, we will all lose all freedom and individuality.” But his book did enrich my experience of wine — I now drink it more slowly, for one thing — and Nossiter’s racy rudeness left me half drunk with pleasure. In fact, if this book were a bottle of wine, I’d describe it as having a firm structure, a core of mature but voluptuous fruit…, lots of bracing acidity, with just a hint of manure on the nose.

[Roberto_Rogness]

If that is Marco Donati in Trentino he is quoting (all the names are right), then that is EXACTLY how he thinks.