“THE BEAR” SLEEPS ON WINE
Wine Continues to Be in Hibernation
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
July 8, 2024
They had a chance. And they blew it. Just like the discredited minor league baseball player-cum-somm, all dressed up in a dark suit, who must have been on performance dis-enhancement drugs, muffed it again. I was entranced – just as I am most of the time watching “The Bear” and hoping against hope – that the minor league ballplayer would talk about the wines he was placing on display at the wannabe major league restaurant. Instead, he was listening to a guy, who was telling him he knew who he was when he was playing ball; and before he got drummed out of the game for violating PHD rules.
It's a scene all too common on television that extoll the virtues and vicissitudes of food and then pay scant notice or none, to wine. It is a pet peeve that I’ve railed against and written about for decades that keeps on perpetuating and crawling under my craw. (See Stanley Tucci’s superficial travel/food show, i.e. Tucci travels to some of the greatest wine regions in Italy and the best he can do is talk about the wine windows in Tuscany.)
Or read a restaurant review where it’s crickets when it comes to wine. That’s because restaurant critics and food people know less abut wine than wine people know about food. We wine folk link inextricably, wine & food. They go together like Swift & Kelce (for now). But for food folk, wine & food doesn’t go together like Swift & Slow.
It’s been my belief that the reason why we hardly ever see wine talk when it comes to food talk is that wine is an entirely different discipline. Everyone eats, not everyone drinks. Throw in the myths of wine as elitism, snobbism, intimidation and confusion and wine will take it in the shorts every time.
Also, some more truthiness: Most people couldn’t give a fig about wine. It’s only us wine-ables that give a rip.
Nonetheless, it pisses me off no end when The Bear guy holds a bottle of wine in his hands and the dialogue -- while sweet that the ballplayer/somm is getting some recognition -- but not for a moment is wine mentioned. I think the guy they bring in, named The Computer because he knows something about finances, which the rest of the woe begotten characters in Carmy’s bôite do not, disses wine. Among the numbers guy’s litany of cost-cutting, he suggests trimming the wine list. Of course, he does.
At this juncture, I think I give up. Wine will never enter the American consciousness as much as it does ours. There is this though, one TV show that gets wine right. Apple TV’s “Drops of God” is the greatest television show or movie I’ve ever seen about wine. Save for that cringeworthy scene in a movie I can’t remember, in which a guy steams off all the labels in some poor schnook’s cellar to get revenge for shtupping his wife. But even “Drops” isn’t set in the U.S. So in conclusion, there’s no hope that wine will make it to primetime here.
But maybe my elevator pitch will save the day. To the Marvel Movie Moguls: Jake Gyllenhaal as The Wine Thief.