Somm: A Review

by Joel LeVangia

A good documentary chooses an interesting subject, explicates it in an accessible way, and subjects the informative material to a time pressure or human element for dramatic effect.  Somm does this.  In fact, it does several things very well, and any defects (like say, the repetitive and sophomoric destruction of filled wine glasses) are easily overlooked.

The interesting subject at issue is the world of wine and the wine geeks who love it.  Now, wine geekery has the ability to be intensely annoying.  We’ve all been to Napa and heard the following breathlessly intoned “It’s like a foggy London night with hints of raspberry and woodsmoke,” or “Try to imagine yourself in a Venetian gondola with unctuous gobbets of lamb fat drizzling onto a fire.” And if we haven’t, we can certainly go there and some pretentious 23-year-old will be passing this off on middle aged tourists in acid-wash jeans, sweatshirts, and sneakers, who are just trying to get drunk.  Those people deserve each other.

Somm, directed by Jason Wise, has a little bit of both that 23-year-old and that sneakered philistine in it, but at its best, it bridges the incomprehensible gap between “medium, medium plus body, floral bouquet, slight oak, and melon rind,” and “I think we’re supposed to have white with fish.”  There is a basis for both of the preceding statements, and Somm hints at the reason for the divide as it describes the incredibly rigorous and voluminous study that must be undertaken to earn the title of Master Sommelier.

There is a great moment in the film when an advanced sommelier named Margaux Pierog says, “Start licking rocks, you’ve never done that? Just understand what that is,” at one point laughing at herself for how ridiculous it sounds. That statement however, is what separates the wheat from the chaff, the metaphor-spouters in tasting rooms from those analytical freaks who really want to grind down into the wine grid and be able to express verbally what is going on chemically in a given vintage.

It is those people, who have taken on the impossible task of translating an arbitrary set of molecular sequences and signifying them with another arbitrary set of metaphorical phrases (at one point in the film, “cat pee” is revealed to be euphemized as “black currant”) who provide the drama as they study for their medical boards/bar exam/NFL combine.  Who, if anyone, is going to pass the exam?  I found the answers surprising and my concern for the fate of the subjects grew as the story unfolded. 

I would recommend this movie to anyone who is bothered by the fact that they don’t know very much about wine.  People who know vaguely which color goes with which class of food will be pleased to see how much work is done by the restaurant employees (none of them master sommeliers) who are tasked with helping them make their wine selection.  Wine can be a lot of fun as long as you don’t decide it’s all a lot of b.s., and Somm does a good job of demonstrating how it isn’t.

Somm opens nationwide in select theaters this weekend. It is also available on iTunes.

(Photo: DLynn Proctor, Eric Railsback, Dustin Wilson, Brian McClintic and Ian Cauble in SOMM by Forgotten Man Films / Samuel Goldwyn Films)