Brando
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, it’s all about Marlon Brando. We have three films in which he stars and a wine for each.
No, The Godfather is not on our menu today, so don’t start dreaming of a nice Sicilian Nero d’Avola. We’re not having that today. Well, you can. In fact, I would advise it. Here, we will scratch a little deeper to find wines which pair perfectly with these three strips of celluloid.
The Appaloosa is a 1966 Western, sometimes titled as Southwest to Sonora, in case you didn’t catch on right away that it’s a Western. Brando plays a Mexican-American who has a beautiful horse. But you know, in the movies as in real life, we can’t have nice things. Not without putting up a fight, anyway.
As fights go, the climax of The Appaloosa is a doozy. It shows the lengths that some men will travel for what, or who, they love. It also shows why you shouldn’t have a chrome gun.
Claar Cellars makes a Washington state Syrah from the Columbia Valley called, fittingly, Appaloosa. At least, they used to make it. 2013 is the vintage shown on their charmingly 1990s website, and that sounds too old to be current. But, that’s what they said about me when I had to ask what “rizz” meant.
https://www.claarcellars.com/_files/ugd/73ebeb_864121f1cd60411a92d33893c5075373.pdf
Burn! is a 1969 war movie, but not about the war that comes to mind right away. This film is set in the 1800s, with Brando playing a British professional troublemaker who tries to overthrow the Portuguese government of a Caribbean country. It is fictional, but based on a real-life American troublemaker who thought Manifest Destiny meant “to the south” as well.
The theme of colonialism that runs through the movie can be, and is, seen as commentary on any number of modern day situations. The ending reminds me of a job I once had in which I had to tell the guy I was replacing that I was replacing him. I knew that when the time came, it would happen to me that way. Uncomfortable, sure. But at least I didn’t get stabbed.
Burn Cottage Winery is located in New Zealand’s Central Otago region. I don’t know if the puteketeke bird lives there, but if it does, it has John Oliver to thank for making it that nation’s Bird of the Century. The Burn Cottage Pinot Noir just may be the New Zealand red wine of the century, but who would know? All that Sauvignon Blanc coming out of the place is powerfully potent.
https://www.winecollective.direct/region/otago/burn-cottage/wines#
Also from 1969 is The Night of the Following Day. Brando co-stars with Richard Boone, who still had some star power saved up from his TV days in Medic, Have Gun – Will Travel and The Richard Boone Show.
The Night tells the story of the kidnapping of a young, beautiful, rich girl who is then held captive in a beach house on the coast of France. If you are going to be kidnapped and held hostage, I suppose there are worse places for that to happen than in a French beach house. But it was in the north of France. Everyone who is ANYone is going to the SOUTH of France this summer. Keep that in mind for your kidnapping caper.
Look, I’m going to reach here for a wine pairing based on the movie’s co-star. In Have Gun – Will Travel, the Bitter Wine episode, Richard Boone as Paladin offers his opinion on a glass of wine. He says, ‘This is a perfect Riesling. Tart, thoroughly dry, light and clean to the taste with a slight greenish amber cast in the color.” Props to the writer who tapped that out on his Selectric in the middle of the night. That is a fairly enlightened view of wine in America in 1969.
It is a great quote, except that it sounds like every Riesling I’ve bought at Ralph’s. How about one with a little age on it, a little of that petrol emotion? Try a Penfolds Koonunga Hill Autumn Riesling. Try to get one that is at least ten years old, because that’s where the petrol aroma lives.
https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/penfolds+koonunga+hill+autumn+riesling+south+australia/1/usa-ca-y