“What would happen if Sideways had a little more Scream?” That’s the question director Casey Rogerson asked himself a few years back while visiting a vineyard in Burgundy with his family. “Dark, shadowy wine cellars; a wall filled with violent-looking harvesting tools. How fun would a chase scene be down here?”
We find the answers to those questions and then some in his new short film Terroir, about a young wine critic (Madison Hu) who returns to a French winery (played admirably by New Jersey’s Amalthea Cellars) with two wine-loving besties, a year after handing the winery an unsavory review.
The new vintage of last year’s flop is extraordinary, and we simply must know winery matriarch Madame Laurent’s secret.
“The grapes tell the story of the soil beneath them,” explains Laurent (Leenya Rideout). “Whatever the earth provides will work its way up through the roots … and enter the juice.” A decent explanation of terroir! But then she has to go and make it weird for everyone (and fun for us), adding, “The grapes are the ones who keep the secrets, not me …”
But those secrets will not be kept, and we’re soon left to wonder whether our critic and her friends will survive the tasting … or become it.
Rogerson told Wine Spectator that Terroir is “by wine lovers, for wine lovers and best enjoyed with a glass in hand.” And from the incessant slurping and pretentious tasting notes to the well-timed jump scares and spilled-blood (or Cabernet?), it abounds with frightful fun. And perhaps most horrifying of all, at least to one doomed wine lover: a bottle of too-warm Aligoté! *GASP*
“My parents take wine very seriously. My dad sometimes says drinking wine is like tasting history,” said Rogerson, who grew up with a copy of Wine Spectator on the coffee table at all times. (Thanks, Rogerson family!) “[Making Terroir] has only deepened my respect and appreciation for wine.”
If, like us, you’re wondering why no one ever thought of making a wine-horror film called Terroir before, it turns out they did! There’s a 2014 feature film of the same name starring Keith Carradine and based on Edgar Allen Poe’s wine-horror short story “The Cask of Amontillado.” And earlier this year another wine-horror short film named Terroir was released on YouTube, in which a troubled wine student apprentices with an eccentric winemaker whose dedication to biodynamics takes a gruesome turn.
And we’re here for all of them. After all, terroir the wine concept can feel inexplicable at times—even spooky! It has an almost supernatural ability to transport us to a specific time and place, revealing taste and aroma memories, and maybe even a few ghosts too.
Watch for the film’s upcoming screenings at terroirfilm.com, or head to the set of the film itself, Amalthea Cellars, where Terroir has been showing all October.
Visit and Taste at Amalthea Cellars, the Set of ‘Terroir’
Amalthea Cellars
209 Vineyard Road, Atco, NJ 08004
Tastings and tours, Wednesday to Sunday
Telephone: (856) 768-8585
Website: amaltheacellars.com
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