The wizard named Oz and Captain Slow. It seems like a pretty weird pairing for a show about wine, but a sure pairing for entertainment. At least that was my line of thinking when I walked out of Creston and District Public Library with a DVD set of Oz and James’s Big Wine Adventure.
For the uninitiated, Oz Clarke is the British expert voice on wine (well, along with Jancis Robinson) and James May, aka Captain Slow, is one of the trio who have made the Top Gear automobile series a cult television favourite. The premise of series one, six half-hour episodes, was to have Clarke educate the beer-drinking May in the joys of French wine and winemaking.
Unfortunately, too many television series seem to be made by the same tiny group of people who assume that viewers need to be treated like half-wits. It is, it seems, not enough just to provide information in clever and innovative ways. Instead, drama and tension have to be introduced, especially just before commercial breaks. That’s why restaurant makeover shows always include last-minute discoveries of faulty wiring, why home reno shows always include needs for hardwood flooring, which has to be installed before tomorrow’s open house and, well the list is endless, isn’t it?
So, in Oz and James’s Big Wine Adventure, the pair climb into a vehicle selected by the notoriously slow-driving May (a Jaguar XJS, which will inevitably break down) and head out into the countryside of France where, incongruously, they will spend time sleeping in a small tent. Of course, it is a struggle to put up the tent, the weather turns rainy and the unlikely pair gets on each others’ nerves at every turn. May doesn’t get, at least at the outset, the aromas and flavours about which James waxes enthusiastically. So James makes a habit of stopping the car to pick plants or get May down on his hands and knees to smell a fresh cow pie, all with the goal of educating the country bumpkin’s dull senses.
In the first episode, James evens finds a tiny winery that still uses the foot stomping method to crush its grapes. The makers claimed that the traditional way is the best way to extract juice and it was at that point that I got seriously annoyed with these manipulative little moments of television. Maybe the winery does use that particular practice, but it would only be a schtick to set itself apart from the competition because I am certain that the still relatively low-tech preference for air bladder crushing is superior to foot stomping every conceivable way. But a scene showing two dramatically different adult males getting climbing barefooted into a vat makes for better television, doesn’t it?
In the end, I am left with the thought that the Oz and James series might hold appeal to people who like their entertainment on the light side. But viewers who really enjoy wine and winemaking will find it trite and the “made for television” moments of conflict between the two stars won’t make the viewing experience any more edifying.
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On a completely different note, I went home from work one day recently with the idea that I wanted to make a snack that would also serve as dessert for a few days. My thoughts first turned to brownies but then lemon flavours came to mind.
A quick trip to the store and I was back in the kitchen, preparing a shortbread base for lemon bars.
I used Ina Garten’s recipe from the Food Network website, drawn to it perhaps because Garden’s cooking show has never resorted to injecting artificial tension into its episodes. Instead, the lovely and soft-spoken host is simply allowed to demonstrate her passion for good food and generally simple recipes.
What makes the recipe a standout is the addition of lemon zest from four to six lemons and a full cup of fresh-squeezed lemon juice into the filling. The result was outstanding.
Admittedly, lemon bars aren’t particularly easy to pair with wines, with the tartness and acidity making them a hard match. But I did think (but didn’t try it) that a chilled Moscato might work quite nicely. The more obvious choice would have been an icy shot of Limoncello, the Italian liqueur that is often served as a postprandial to aid with digestion.
Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.
