Why wine is like a romantic comedy.
Like a lot of things in life, good wine and good romantic comedies are about balance. In this discussion let's use the comedy portion of a romantic comedy film to relate to the sweetness in a wine and the romantic portion to relate to the acidity in wine. I find specific examples to be the most effective examples so for this example we will use: Vouvray – a white wine from the Loire region in France made from the Chenin Blanc grape and “Along Came Polly” as its equal in a romantic comedy.
Now. Any good romantic comedy worth its salt will have a good balance of comedy and romance sprinkled throughout to help assuage a broader audience and move the movie along. There will be tender moments with overwrought dialogue concerning love and relationships balanced by situational comedy and maybe even a flatulence joke thrown in for good measure. In the same vain, any wine worth discussing out loud will have a pitch perfect balance of residual sugar (aka – sweetness) that creates the full round texture and depth of flavor offset by acidity (aka acidity) that adds the structure and running theme that ties all the rest of the wine together.
To sight our specific example- all the scenes with Philip Seymour Hoffman, especially the basketball court scene, are the comedic interludes that fill in the gaps and round out the underlying romance in the Along Came Polly. The residual sugar in Vouvray does a similar thing by taking the edge off the naturally high acidity in the Chenin Blanc from this area in France where the soil is basically all limestone. The extra sugar left in all most all Vouvray acts as momentum builders to the crisp theme of acidity that holds the wine together and runs straight through the entire movie. This thematic structure created by such pure acidity in the wine is represented in the budding romance between Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston. Acidity and romance aer what make the movie and the wine what they are.
Just like some romantic comedies can be completely off balance and end up in a piling heap of cinematic disaster like Gigli, a wine that is out of balance is is a clumsy drink to say the least. Even wines that have a good bit of sweetness need a lot of acidity to provide the freshness and tang on the finish so the wine doesn't taste like your trying to swallow a love scene between Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck.
