Weekend Watch | These Amazon Prime Video, Netflix movies about booze will teach you to sparkle during conversation this holiday season

Bob Dylan and Noel Gallagher have sung about it. Ghalib, Iqbal and Faraz debated about it in verse. Writers before Shakespeare spilled it on their words, and writers after Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay are still writing about it. Many of us tasted it when we were too young to appreciate it and learnt to understand the amber ambrosia, the seduction of the whites and the celestial fire of the reds…

But, during this holiday season, I am happy to share movies and series about alcohol on Amazon Prime Video and Netflix that will blow your mind as they did mine. Plus, you will see the incredible screen presence of Alan Rickman.

Bottle Shock (available on Amazon Prime Video) is not only a fun movie to watch, but it shows us that we cannot give up on our dreams no matter how much the stability of a nine to five pulls us. Who can resist a movie with Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman, Dennis Farina and even Chris Pine? A true story about how a 1973 California Chardonnay entered a blind taste test in France in an event called Judgement in Paris (1976) and won, helping winemakers all around the world get a foot in the door and be accepted by the snobbish wine connoisseurs in Europe.

Bo Barret is still making wines in California today. Although you may not buy the award winning 1973 Chardonnay (it went for over $11,800 a bottle!), you can buy other wines made by Chateau Montelena in India! Gustavo Brambila from the movie is making wines as well. So, your itinerary for your next safe holiday is sort of decided, no?

The description of wine in the film, ‘It’s sunshine captured in a bottle,’ made me look at how we drink wines. And, why drinking that bit of sunshine produces so much passion. The documentary film Somm on Amazon Prime Video opened my eyes to a world of how much is at stake when we pop open the cork of a bottle. Four young men are shown to be cramming for an exam to be able to tell us - diners across the world - what goes on with the ruby reds or the rose or the whites…

Imagine knowing the difference between the 3,000 varieties of grape that are grown in Italy alone. Do not let anyone tell you how tough it was to get into that Ivy League college or how they studied for that rank in the IIT or the IIMs. Tell them that they would fail at this world’s most difficult exam which not only challenges your right side of the brain, but the left side as well. Does the wine remind you of the faint smell of vanilla in your grandmother’s closet or just the freshness of opening that new tube of tennis balls…

Stephen Fry said - and I paraphrase - that wine is a better teacher than ink, and the banter (with wine) is often better than books. Of course, a frothy Mills & Boon-ish romance on Netflix called A California Christmas confirmed what I saw in Bottle Shock: that immigrants packed French grape vines in their suitcases as they explored the new world in the 1800s and saved the French vines after having been nearly wiped out by a tiny bug called Phylloxera.

Thankfully, those days traveling with plants from home was easier and not controlled at the border. The hardy native American vines, grafted with French ones produced a variety of grape that now resists that tiny aphid which loved feasting on the roots of sweet vitis vinifera. Do not take my word for it, read Christy Campbell’s book Phylloxera: How Wine Was Saved For The World.

Movies like Sideways, A Good Year, Wine Country are not on streaming platforms but will put a smile on your face about the emotions wines induce. And, yes, there is a show on Netflix called Monarca which will induce you into trying Tequila. Who knew there were so many kinds, and how many stories can be spun around this cactus juice? But hey you’ve also been told alcohol is bad for you, no? If so, then watch this myth busting documentary called The Truth About Alcohol on Netflix. It will reveal some surprising facts and will help you get through the holiday season without being the drunk uncle (or aunt) under the table. And, it helps because Dr. Javid has a very nice British accent.

Once you begin exploring the truth about your favourite alcoholic beverage, then you’ll discover many documentaries on Amazon Prime Video about a particular kind of beverage: whether it’s the secret behind the bubbles of Champagne or why Bordeaux grows so many wonderful wines. And the wine business is so full of dineros, that there will be crooks too! This wonderful, jaw-dropping story of a crook in fancy company is on Netflix. And it is rightfully titled: Sour Grapes.

Imagine paying in Bitcoins for fine wine! This is where the FBI discovered a scam in wine! Marvelous watch! You have seen stories of our beer kings and despair about bootleggers but all is not lost, you can enjoy a glass or two of our domestic wines. And aficionados will lay money out to say our rum is better than anything they have tasted from other parts of the world. India is firmly on the world map of wines and spirits. We produce world class wines and the stories here of wine and beer need to be told. Our romance with the grape has been chronicled by home-grown poets who are either still singing praises or drowning their sorrows like Devdas in liquid gold.

But, what do you do when your family owns a barbeque restaurant and you know the difference between a pinot noir and a cabernet? What do you say to your family? This young man and his father have a battle of wills and this connect with fine wines makes for a very nice film called Uncorked, which plays on Netflix.

As I said, we learnt to appreciate wines because we tried them. Let me digress to a time when we walked in for mashima’s birthday with a case of Barton & Guestier Vouvray and her horrified face said it all… But that slightly sweet yet dry version of the Chenin Blanc grape went so well with the fiery Indian food she had cooked for us, that we have been a fan of that wine for ever. Discover your personal favourite, and as they say, have a wonderful holiday! Cheers!