While family life and a heavy work schedule (yes, what I do during the day is fun but also should be considered “work”) have lowered the frequency of my wine & food outings, I still haven’t lost that insane interest in all things high quality that can be tasted and over-consumed. So when the film “Julie & Julia” came out, I certainly had to go. And I won’t even delve into the notion of how I can be so smitten with both Meryl Streep and Amy Adams at the same time.
I am more of a fascinated gourmand than a chef, so while I haven’t cooked widely from Julia Child’s cookbook, I was certainly familiar with it. And I do read quite a few books on the subject of food, including one called “The United States of Arugula” which is an excellent book on how America got from how it used to eat (boy, I’m glad I’m not any older than I am) to how we eat now, which includes some details on Julia Child’s large part in the process. So I can see how someone like Julie Powell, more the cooking type, could become enthralled and driven in her quest.
Which got me thinking about the quest that Nick and I have been on for the last 10 years (in a time before blogging). Most folks don’t realize that Nick and I didn’t travel to Argentina together in search of wines to import to the US. Nick used to sell wine to me at my previous retail wine company, so we went down for a, well..ok, it was just for kicks. But like Julie, we fell under the spell of a wine region and people whose tale had to be told. I still remember the first moments of realization when we looked at each other outside our hotel rooms and said, “How many times in a wine guy’s life does he get to discover a great new wine region, and the 5th largest one at that?”
And like Julie’s interminable march through “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”, our expedition has included days where we have laid on the floor wondering whether we had the will to continue (we didn’t melt down like she did in the kitchen, but us guys have a harder time showing our emotions). Unlike Julie, however, our project seems to have no end in sight, no final chapter. We spent the last 10 years helping to put Argentina on the map, then Mendoza, then Malbec (and Torrontes, lest we omit it), and now we are drilling down deeper and educating Americans about the regionality of Malbec.
Fortunately for us, just as America has changed their cooking/dining habits for the better, they have also welcomed Argentine wines over time into their lives at the table, and that has made it all worthwhile.
Tags: Amy Adams, Argentina, Julia Child, Julie & Julia, Julie Powell, Malbec, Mendoza, Meryl Streep, Torrontes, wine import