What I had done was to get ready for the film and as what my friends had recommend, was to get a couple of bottles of wine to sample so as not to suffer some deprivation while watching the movie.

In fact, I started out with a simple half bottle of Coronas ’99, a Tempranillo from Spain that I had during the first half of the film. This split bottle that matures faster than the regular bottle that I picked up in the supermarket was at its peak. In fact, I was fooled and washed my wine glass because I had thought some perfume from a detergent had contaminated my wine. It turned out to be a natural cologne aroma of sandalwood, leather and violets that enthralled my senses as I started the film.

The movie is all about Miles, a divorcee and struggling writer who teaches 8th grade English to make ends meet take his bestfriend Jack, an actor who didn’t quite make it for a week of gourmet wining and dining in wine county before he gets married. Miles, your typical wine geek cum snob is a very uptight character that has not gone over his divorce the past two years and seems to be bothered by the notion that it is not all wine and dine for his best friend but also being able to score on the horizontal for his final hooplah just before marriage. (In my opinion, food and wine as a perfect marriage would be synonymous with Dining and Sex as another perfect pair since us humans succumb to both pleasures of the flesh in whatever order we put priorities to… Stomach going up or stomach going down…)

So they get to meet up with some chicks who are into wine through the insistence of Jack who wishes to learn the appreciation of wine while getting his uptight best friend into the pleasures of scoring with a waitress taking a master’s degree in viticulture and knows her wine while he gets it on with a hot oriental babe who promotes and offers wine for tasting.

The comical enthusiasm that projects the new sophistication of today’s modern society and a need to imbibe a certain amount of sophistication as portrayed by both best friends, an uptight wine scholar and a philistine-of-the-vine who is willing to learn gives the movie its funny relief plus pleasures of the palate side by side with pleasures of procreation.

The movie venerates the rising popularity in wine varietals with pinot noir, the temperamental and difficult grape of burgundy as the re-discovered vino for the noveaus. It also expounds on other wines made from other grape varieties such as Cabernet Franc, Syrah, and Sauvignon Blanc showing that there is life on the other side and that wine is not all Cabernet Sauvignon. The movie also pokes a ridiculing finger at Chardonnay.

The film is wonderfully informative and carries the opinion of experts who graduate from Cabernet Sauvignon and Bordeaux to the less dense but highly, jammy and flavorful Burgundies or Pinto Noir wines that new oenophiles are discovering because they are cheaper now to produce. (I remember having to sample a Sixty Thousand peso bottle of Romanee Conti, one of ten thousand bottles produced in that little estate eighteen years ago and its second wine, Romanee St. Vivant brought out by good friend Ambassador Renaud Levy who was way ahead being a pinot noir enthusiasts already at that time…)

It also features the expensive collectible aspiration of yuppies who find super tuscan wines like Sassicaia that turned Maya the sophisticated waitress-oenology student on to wines and Mile’s. Chateau Cheval blanc, that in a suicidal moment of depression he consumed with a burger in a diner.

The best scene of the movie though (aside from Jack with Stephanie’s legs on his shoulder…) was the dinner that kept track of every course paired with award winning pinot noirs from boutique wineries that gives the audience the heady feeling of consumption with good food and vinos. I was lucky enough to fill my palate with my second wine a Marimar estate 2000 pinot noir, with hints of spice, oak and dried fruit as the dinner movie scene progressed from homegrown pinots to a pedigreed French Pommard. This was such a hedonistic scene since it is probably a great decadent fantasy of every wine loving male to have these prime wines while dining in the company of beautiful and knowledgeable females.

The movie perks the viewer with a craving for oral psychosexual fulfillment as one watches every sip and tasting of every vintage with ecstatic pupil dilation.

Must See….. Must See….

(If you have any questions about the wines and what I had, do drop me a note…)

1. Willy’s Tea house – This newly opened place is on E. Rodriguez Avenue in front of Quezon City Sports Club. The sign says "Original Formosa Flavor" and what tickled my curiosity was one item they had which is known as odorous or stinking fried bean curd. All over the street food stalls in Taiwan we have these strong powerfully pungent cubes of bean curd frying and being given a dose of caramelized sautéed onions and chili in a soy based sauce. Willy’s version is quite pungent in fact stronger than your average Taiwanese street stall. "A certain amount of bravado and open mindedness is needed to sample this delicacy which is full flavored and full of "umami" tastiness but could be appalling to many. One can settle for steamed Tofu which is smoother and given a dose of wood spices, if one cannot take the strong punch of odorous bean curd.

Willy’s selections are simple and low priced. His homemade white noodles done in his kitchen are very typical of the Taiwanese style basically topped with gravy as his spicy sate beef or plain blanched and topped with chopped pork. I would definitely recommend the Sate Beef.

Willy also has hot pots with medicinal herbs, in chicken, lamb and pork versions which I failed to ask him if it has sildenafil like properties. Anyway the hot pots are quite restorative if only for their taste and the idea of having a boiling hot cup of soup ladled on your table is very consoling.

Other dishes are the beef belly (tripe) and kenchi which are braised in spiced soy sauce. Willy also sells some Taiwanese green tea, if you are the type that likes brewing your own cup. I wish he had fancier varieties of oolong though which is famous in Taiwan. A last commendable dish is the oyster cake which is more of the sticky starch base wrapped around the oyster and smothered in an oyster based gravy with less egg.

If only for the reasonable prices, noodles, oyster cake, cold cuts and tofu preparations, Willy’s would deserve a visit. (If you do try the odorous tofu, and if it doesn’t grow on you, don’t say you weren’t warned…)