Bob's Blog: Give it Air
OPINION: “Have a look at this” said a good friend as he passed me a cutout from The Times with the heading “The wine gadget sommeliers say can make your £10 bottle taste better”.
OPINION: Drops of God is a mini-series about a large wine inheritance and the civilised battle between a Japanese wine enthusiast, Issei, and a French woman whose nose bleeds when she tastes wine.
The oddly mismatched pair are subjected to a series of wine tastings – the winner of which gets to inherit the world’s largest wine cellar; 87,000 bottles with an estimated value of US$148 million. That’s roughly US$1,701 per bottle.
The cellar was the life’s work of Cecile’s father who wanted his wine to go to someone who would appreciate it, but surely she would die from loss of blood before she had polished off the first bottle of pre-phylloxera Chateau Haut Brion? The slightly built Issei might also do a bit of damage to his constitution if he tried to sample even a small portion of the precious bottles. Clearly Cecile’s father didn’t think the inheritance through.
However these are minor details. This complex, fast-moving series is about winning and losing, love and sex (discretely handled), crime and intrigue, and how people with an indecent amount of disposable income spend it. It lacks any humour, perhaps because wine and winemaking take themselves too seriously. The film is in three languages; French, English and Japanese; with English subtitles which give it an international edge. I enjoyed it. Drops of God scored 100% on Rotten Tomatoes’ average tomatometer. Drops of God is streaming now on Apple TV.
OPINION: The New Year is well underway, and in January the first grapes of the new vintage were harvested in…
OPINION: A common refrain last year was 'survive 'til 25', including from those in New Zealand's wine industry facing rising…
A system that combines UV-C light for disinfection could provide chemical free treatment of plant pathogens and diseases such as…
Ben Leen never tires of the view at Amisfield, where audacious guinea fowl strut the grounds against a backdrop of…
OPINION: Altogether Unique 2024 was a stimulating two days, rich in business insight and research innovation.