Wine documentary lets genie out of the bottle
Challenged to document the rise and fall of two Bordeaux vintages, vintner and filmmaker Warwick Ross came up with a 'wine thriller', writes Bernice Chan
Warwick Ross was nervous at the first-ever preview of Red Obsession, the documentary he co-scripted and directed with David Roach about the 2009 Bordeaux vintage that fetched record prices and then the dramatic plunge of the following year's wine.
His audience that evening: 500 Bordeaux chateaux owners and other members of the wine community.
Afterwards, "a few of the major people came up to me and said, 'Not only did we love the film, but we loved the fact that you told the truth'," Ross recalls. "And that meant so much to me, as a docu-maker. They felt it hadn't been twisted. But the film is quite dramatic. One person has described it as 'the world's first wine thriller'."
The filmmaker credits Australian master of wine Andrew Caillard with pitching him the story on a flight from Sydney to London. "He goaded me, saying I was a winemaker and filmmaker, [so] 'how come you haven't made a wine film yet?'"
Ross, who runs his family's Portsea Estate in Victoria, New South Wales, producing award-winning Burgundy-style wines, feels that most wine films are for self-promotion, or for wine buffs. Caillard, however, was talking about the 2009 vintage - possibly the best in the century.
"Andrew said a lot of clients were worried about pushing prices to the point where no one would buy, but the Chinese were stepping in and that's a whole new world. And that's what got me: China was the hook."