People who know me know better than to ask me about wine. They know that one simple question will ensnare them in a conversation that lasts too long and ends up putting them to sleep. It's the same with movie aficionados. They always end up talking about movies that were seen by only twelve people in a limited opening in Sherman Oaks. My kind of people.
The 2019 sci-fi Vivarium is one of those films. It takes perhaps the bleakest view of child-rearing ever seen in a movie. The story involves a couple who are taken to live in a certain house and forced to raise a certain child who was left on their porch. Any parent will tell you, it's a job raising a kid. In this case, it is an actual j-o-b, from which they cannot escape. No amount of "mommy wine" can help. And in the end, he never calls, he never writes….
The temptation is to pair any old cheap, box-wine Chardonnay with Vivarium, but maybe we won't treat "mommy wine culture" so casually. It is, basically, functioning alcoholism, after all.
Let's cheat a bit and call on Domaine Parent for a nice Chardonnay - I mean a really nice Chardonnay. And "Parent" is Jacques Parent's name, en Français, so it's "pair ONT." A bottle of his Grand Cru white Burgundy will have you unfolding a Benjamin, but he has a good $20 Chardonnay as well.
Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx is a 1970 comedy you may be completely unaware of, even though it stars Gene Wilder. He plays a manure collector in Ireland who falls for an American exchange student. Fortunately for him, he doesn't fall into the manure. Unfortunately, horses are banned from Dublin's streets and his job goes away faster than that of a West Virginia coal miner.
Good luck finding it, but there is a wine produced in Dublin - Lusca Vineyard. I would try their Dunkelfelder, if only because I would love to bring out a bottle of it at home and say, "Here's a nice Dunkelfelder." They make only about 30 cases a year, and it's anyone's guess how they make a living at that volume.
The Touchables provides a 1968 glimpse into the hip scene which blossomed in London in the late '60s. A famous pop star is kidnapped by four young, beautiful birds, as the Brits would say back then. They keep him in a big, plastic dome in the English countryside. Everyone looks for him, but they can't find him. "Have you tried that big, plastic dome in the countryside?" Anyway, it wouldn't do any good to find him, as he rather likes the idea of staying with his captors.
That sort of situation screams out loud for a nice sparkling wine. There is such a thing, produced in England, not far from London. Chapel Down Brut will run about $40 in the states, no kidnapping needed.
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