AGING BEFORE ITS TIME

REVIEWED - MONDOVINO: Insofar as I know anything about it, I have no argument with the grand theories advanced by sometime sommelier Jonathan Nossiter in this documentary concerning the current state of the wine industry, writes Donald Clarke

US manufacturers and US critics - particularly the mighty poo-bah Robert Parker - have, Nossiter suggests, become so powerful that wineries throughout the world have begun to manipulate their product to conform to certain expectations.

The chief villain is bumptious wine consultant Michel Rolland, whose mysterious skills are consistently portrayed as a being directed towards global homogenisation. The principal heroes are the owners of small independent vineyards, particularly those holding out against the advance of American giants such as Mondavi.

This is all interesting. But Nossiter makes his point in the first 20 minutes, then, pausing occasionally to photograph one of the many dogs he encounters, rambles on tediously for a further two hours. Only the nausea induced by the unnecessarily jarring camera movements serves to inject any tension into the film's later reels.

Indeed, the point at which Mondovino, which was screened in an even longer version at Cannes, eventually comes to a halt seems to have been selected completely at random. He finally allows us to escape after practically weeping when a hard-working Argentinean grower, untainted by mainstream commercialism, offers him a bottle of his finest.

The sad fact is that, though ragged individualism is always welcome, Mondovino could have done with a cinematic Michel Rolland to cut the thing down to 90 minutes, slap an old-school voice-over on it and clean up the sound. This version offers too much of a not-very-good thing.