If you have the attitude that “life is a cabernet,” and you want to see how other people relate to wine, try a movie. Many films featuring people making, tasting, selling and even sending back wine in a restaurant are on video. A few of our favorites are listed below:
– A Walk in the Clouds (1995): Keanu Reeves plays a WWII vet who helps a young, unmarried pregnant woman save face by pretending to be her husband. The girl happens to be the daughter of a strict Napa Valley wine grower. There is a harvest, some grape stomping and lots of gorgeous vineyard footage.
– French Kiss (1995): Must be a good year for wine movies. Meg Ryan suppresses her fear of flying to follow her boyfriend (Timothy Hutton) to Paris. There she finds him with another woman and connects with ne’er-do-well Kevin Kline, who also happens to be the son of a French vintner. The romantic escapade that follows is predictable, but the French vineyard scenery is spectacular.
– The Grapes of Wrath (1940): The John Steinbeck classic about Depression-era migrant workers doesn’t have anything to do with wine, just the produce that an Oklahoma family, refugees from the Dust Bowl, picks in the orchards of California to survive and maintain dignity.
– Arsenic and Old Lace (1944): Cary Grant stars in this zany black comedy as the affable nephew of two dotty sisters who lure single men to their house and then poison them with elderberry wine laced with arsenic. The nutty sisters bury the bodies in the cellar, which is also the Panama Canal to Grant’s looney cousin, who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt and runs around yelling “Charge.”