Category:Videos

“Don’t be so stingy” — Peter Lorre and Vincent Price in wine tasting cage match

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Roger Corman’s take on wine tasting, featuring Peter Lorre and Vincent Price

What happens when director Roger Corman, writer Richard Matheson, Peter Lorre, Vincent Price and the immortal Edgar Allan Poe take on wine tasting?

This six-minute scene in Corman’s 1962 “Tales of Terror.”

Corman’s horror films, often starring Price and based on Poe stories, are the stuff of cult legend (and a tip o’ the WC’s fedora to my old pal and video guru Lee Murray for introducing me to Corman all those years ago). The story in the link does a fine job of outlining Corman’s career. For our purposes, it’s enough to know that Corman, Matheson, Lorre, and Price take a tired and cliched scene and turn it into something better than it should be. Lorre makes a wine tasting face at Price at about the four minute mark that is priceless.

Video courtesy of Dr. Lance Boyle on YouTube

 

Here’s looking at you, kid: Only Bogey can solve the wine world’s turmoil

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

“The problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in a world where the three-tier system runs everything”

Maybe the reason the wine world is in such turmoil — flat growth, too high prices, too much crummy wine — is because we don’t have the right person to help us in our quest for better wine: Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca.” So the Wine Curmudgeon worked a little editing magic with one of the most famous scenes in cinema history.

My apologies to Bogart, Claude Rains, and Ingrid Bergman; director Michael Curtiz; and the Epstein brothers and Howard Koch, who shared screenplay credit for the film. My excuse: In one of my other lives, I wrote a book called “The Casablanca Companion,” so I know much more about this movie than anyone should.

A tip o’ the WC’s fedora to Eagle Burger on YouTube, where I found the original scene. And all foolishness like this owes a debt to WineParody, whose Robert Parker epic is the standard by which these efforts are judged.

Make sure you turn captions on when you watch the video; you can make the captions bigger or change their color by clicking on the settings gear on the lower right.

More wine and film parodies:
• Shaft
• Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Coming soon to a YouTube near you: Wine Curmudgeon videos

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Wine Curmudgeon videosIs the cyber-ether – let alone the wine world – ready for Wine Curmudgeon videos?

Is the Wine Curmudgeon going to be the Internet’s next viral sensation? We’ll know early this summer, when the first of two wine videos I made this week goes live.

I did the videos, featuring helpful, useful information about summer wine and restaurant wine, for the Private Label Manufacturer’s Association. The videos are part of the trade group’s quest to convince U.S. retailers to step up their private label wine effort – because, of course, Winking Owl. I’ll post a link when the summer wine video goes live.

The experience was unique. How else would an ink-stained wretch see a process that involves makeup, story conferences, green screens, and long discussions about what I should wear? I haven’t spent that much time worrying about my clothes since since my mother picked them out. I should also mention that I have spent much of my writing career gently mocking – or worse – those of my friends who did have to worry about that stuff. I suppose I will have to endure their gentle – or worse – mocking now.

The goal with each video was to avoid winespeak as well as the deadly dullness that overwhelms most wine videos (even those with big names and big budgets). We wanted to offer information that wine drinkers could use when they were staring at the supermarket Great Wall of Wine. Which I think we did.

A very large tip o’ the WC’s fedora to Sonia Petrocelli, the videos’ producer, and Richard Dandrea, who wrote them. Both made the process infinitely easier than I thought it would be, and their patience with my ignorance of all things video was much appreciated.

TV wine ads: Drink Black Tower, invade a foreign country

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

This 1982 Black Tower TV commercial reminds us that TV wine ads don’t improve with age

Black Tower is a German wine, best known for its black bottle. In the 1970s and 1980s, when U.S. wine drinkers wanted sweet white wine, Black Tower played off Blue Nun’s success to enjoy a bit of popularity before heading to the back shelves of the liquor store. Where it remains, for $8 a bottle, in case you’re curious.

Which brings us to this bizarre Black Tower TV commercial from 1982. The brand’s marketing types probably thought they had to distance it from Blue Nun’s image, so they made it much more manly. A deep, dark voice reminds us the wine comes “in the towering black bottle” while faux Wagner music plays in the background. Frankly, after watching this, it feels like it’s time to conquer Europe.

The catch, of course, is that Black Tower was about as manly as a baby diaper. It was a sweet, soft wine, and the commercial crams that information in even though it doesn’t quite fit the rest of the ad. Plus, there’s a blond woman eating an apple, because all wine commercials have to have blond women (though I’m not quite sure why the apple).

Like I said, bizarre.

So one more example of the sad state of TV wine ads, whether today or 36 years ago. Is it wonder I worry about the future of the wine business?

Video courtesy of Sean Mc via YouTube

More about TV wine ads:
• TV wine ad update: Does this Kim Crawford commercial make sense?
• Chill a Cella: Now we know why more Americans don’t drink wine
• When Blue Nun ruled the wine world

Corks: The most dangerous wine closure in the world

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Watch this video, and you’ll understand how dangerous corks are

The Wine Curmudgeon will make no other comment on the following, other than this: “This young man would not have nearly blown up his kitchen if all wines had screwcaps.”

The complete story is here, via BuzzFeed. Lawrence Guo of San Leandro, Calif., wanted to open a bottle of rose, but his corkscrew broke. Disaster then ensued. He tried opening the bottle with a lighter, similar to a video he had seen on YouTube (and which we have detailed here).

When that didn’t work, he used the flame on a gas stove. The results were, in Guo’s words, disastrous – “we could have died,” he said. The bottle shattered, glass flew everywhere, and Guo and his friend were lucky to avoid injury.

He offers a lengthy explanation about what went wrong, quoting thermal shock, molecular vapor expansion, and vapor pressure. But we know the real reason.

Corks.

“We tried everything we could to open it, but the cork wouldn’t budge,” Guo told Buzzfeed. “I would advise to wear some better protective gear covering vital body parts if this were to be replicated.”

None of which you need with a screwcap.

“Learn French by drinking wine” – the road to becoming a YouTube star

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

youtubeWho knew getting drunk on camera was the best way for your video to go viral on YouTube?

If you write for the Internet, you spend a disproportionate amount of your day worrying about visitor numbers, bounce rate, click throughs, and other assorted metrics.

What a waste of time.

That’s because content doesn’t necessarily matter – going viral on YouTube does. The authority is a British website called The Register, which tracks just such Internet shenanigans. It advises those of us who do this for a living to forget about trying to inform anyone, but to:

“Drink. Lots. Fratboy antics rack up views like no one’s business, dude. So grab yourself a bottle of cheap beer/spirits/cleaning fluid, set your webcam going, and prepare for fame. If you can manage to be sick at the end of it, so much the better.”

Its case in point in this video, “An American Drunk,” posted by gogo22. As near as I can tell, the guy in the video is listening to a French language lesson while drinking four bottles of French wine (the infamously cheap L’Epayrie Blanc, about $5 a bottle). And, as the Register advises, getting drunk.

The video is too long – more than five minutes – and too static to seem to have much of a chance of going viral. I’ve been told the best viral candidates should be short, direct, immediate and feature a cute animal or baby. But I did start writing on a typewriter with carbon paper, so what do I know about 21st century technology?

You can judge for yourself – the video is at the end of the post. Hopefully, this isn’t a feature I need to add to the blog.

“One of the most noted bloggers about wine anywhere in America”

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Yes, that’s the WC on Tim McNally’s New Orleans TV show

The clip below is from my pal Tim McNally’s New Orleans’ wine and food TV show, Appetite for Life, on WLAE, channel 32. Which is PBS, and who knew an old sportswriter would ever end up on the same network as Jacques and Julia?

Tim was kind enough to interview me about trends in the wine business, including why cheap wine doesn’t get any respect, the need ingredient labels, and other wine business foolishness. As Tim noted, we did the interview via Skype; otherwise, we might have done more wine drinking than wine talking (and that is Bugs Bunny on the bookshelf in back of me).

And yes, I was very embarrassed by the introduction.