More than 10 years ago, Jonathan Nossiter’s documentary Mondovino introduced many (including me) to an ongoing debate in the world of viticulture, which resonated in agriculture, and culture generally. Is wine being insidiously standardised? And made flavourless and joyless, like the food we eat? Now Nossiter returns to the subject with a film that is more emphatically about the rebels and refuseniks. He talks to passionate independent winegrowers in Italy, low-tech revolutionaries who are working outside the soulless system; their wines don’t conform, sometimes priced radically low. All this revives the debate about identity and terroir from the first film; you could compare it to Britain’s real ale movement. One producer complains that the certification system is creating a world in which everything is Macdonaldizzato – homogenised, like burgers. Nossiter brings in a cinephile dimension by interviewing Gian Luca Farinetti, director of the Cineteca Di Bologna: his mission to restore classic movies is comparable to the winegrowers’ determination to return to wines of real character and place. (Farinelli is shown denouncing the phrase “old movies”, when we don’t say “old paintings” or “old novels”.) An interesting companion piece to the first film.
