Making good movies about wine is not easy. There's a lot of pomp and circumstance, pronunciations, boring family stories and endless shots of oceans of vines (monoculture to the max) marching across what were once grasslands or forested slopes.
The new film Eden is not one of those.
The feature length documentary, seven years in the making, is an entirely filmic way of storytelling, with a captivating story that unfolds in time and space across the Saratoga mountain landscape that is Mount Eden Vineyards.
You can read more here.
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| McGilvray with Sophie and Reid Patterson |
It's a visual feast as well as an auditory one. Anyone interested in the real story of wine should see it, including every WSET class in the country.
Starting a wine estate is an epic journey, as the film shows. Starting at the dawn of California wine history time–a vignette ably captured in succinct and visually compelling way–the site and its surroundings are depicted in a 150 year time span they deserve to be seen in.
It's also shows the planning pressure as well as the brutality of planting a new vineyard, punching holes in a steep hillside, dramatically seen in the film from a drone's point of view. Anyone who wants to say ag is regenerative will think twice, no matter how well the hillside is farmed. (And to be fair, wineries of the Santa Cruz Mountains do farm steep hillside terrains, just as anyone who is farming in mountains.)
But the real story here is one that anyone–no need to be a wine lover–can engage in since it unfolds as a family drama whose plot is unforeseen at the beginning of the film.
The Patterson family, who accidentally grew to be custodians and then majority owners of the winery, are two generations when the story begins and three by the end with some dramatic twists and turns, commensurate with age and life ambitions at each stage of their individual members' arcs. That's emotional fodder enough for any audience.
There's the gruff, Marlboro Man patriarch, Jeffrey Patterson, who's all work, work, work. "You can't make wine if you don't know how to fix a tractor," he says, and when you see the drone footage of the site, you see why. The family's on top of a mountain. And they're the only ones there, unless you count the close knit ties they have to their highly skilled and dedicated Mexican-American crew.
The estate is close to Paul Masson's original winery, The Mountain Winery, a favorite concert and picnic spot, where local vintners, including Mount Eden, held the annual Wines of the Santa Cruz Mountains tasting on Sunday. (The winery's also a cultural institution, sort of like the West Coast rock concert equivalent of Tanglewood, the iconic spot for classical music for East Coasters.)
The film is also a lesson in what makes a wine. While winemakers are often in the spotlight, and wine critics want to know about aging vessels and whole cluster, Jeffrey's example makes the point that wine is made in the vineyard. He points out that they spend 9 months in the vineyards (and just a fraction of that time in the winemaking).
While Jeffrey smokes his nightly cigar by an outdoor campfire, Ellie Patterson, wife and partner is the brand's business manager, a role she plays adeptly throughout the decades. The couple spent 40+ years here and raised two children, Sophie and Reid, now adults.
Part of the drama is about succession. What is the value of an inheritance if no one wants to inherit it? Or if they do want to? What are one's lifetime goals in their 20s? 30s? 60's? And how can you see around the corner of your future?
Reid and Sophie's stories are sensitively unveiled over time. It's an emotional rollercoaster, but one given time and space and glorious audio to enjoy as its all unfolds.
You will feel as if you have become a family friend, observing from the sidelines, and that you've also gotten a real experience of the texture and beauty of the place.
New York Times wine writer Eric Asimov provides a few talking head moments but these are just footnotes on the overarching narrative.
If you want to get a sneak peek, see the trailer here:
I was introduced to the film by hearing to the California history podcast interview with director Chris McGilvray, which I listened to on the drive home from the Santa Cruz Mountains tasting before renting the film online when I got home.
Hats off to McGilvray and team for this masterpiece of wine history and family storytelling, as well as the gorgeous cinematography and audio. It may be a long time before we see such masterful film about wine, history and family again.
McGilvray debuted the film at the Cinequest film festival in the South Bay and so made online streaming available–but only until March 31. It costs just $3.99 to rent it online. Of course, the film would be best paired with a glass of Mount Eden wine.
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| McGilvray (center) and crew |
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