“Imagine what you can draw on thousands of blank pages; what a country can achieve with so many humans willing to learn and work.”
“It’s a heartening and heartfelt story told with lots of empathy.“
Con Nats
3.5 /5 Of the finest 🍷known to humanity
As an internationally renowned wine taster says, sending a Zimbabwean wine tasting team to the World Championships is like sending an Egyptian bobsled team to the Winter Olympics. It doesn’t happen. (Well, it kinda has, but that’s beside the point…)
Jospeph, Tinash, Pardon and Marlvin are sommeliers from Zimbabwe (that’s French for those pretentious wine waiters who talk about wine as if it’s a three-course meal). And now they were heading off to compete in the World Blind Tasting Championships, which involves tasting a glass of wine and deducting what type it is, which region, who the wine maker is and the year.
These guys hadn’t tasted wine until they started working in a restaurant just four years earlier and as devout Christians, they didn’t drink. When you see them in action, you can see why they’re worthy of competing, even though it’s an inexact science. In one blind tasting scene, all four taste the same red, have differing opinions, but one picks the wine, year and region correctly.
The film then tells us each of their back stories. They’re all refugees who fled Mugabe’s flailing economy where one month’s wages wasn’t enough for a bus ticket. You have to wonder at the desperation of thinking South Africa provided hope. They gently tell us their stories and Joseph almost died hiding in a container. They worked as dishwashers, gardeners until becoming waiters and then sommeliers. All they want to do is to work.
One scene shows a South African pastor who had welcomed 3,000 refugees to his church. He makes the most powerful point: We have to stop treating refugees as vermin or pests that need to be got rid of. These are people with hidden talents.
It also strikes you that these four were blank pages in regards to wine knowledge. Now they were learning its intricacies and competing with the elite. Imagine what you can draw on thousands of blank pages; what a country can achieve with so many humans willing to learn and work.
The competition section focuses on the team and their French character and short-term coach, Denis Garret. He adds colour to proceedings and just a touch of controversy. But this all about these guys competing and their pride in a country they had to escape.
Warwick Ross ad Rob Coe produced and directed this documentary, following on the success of Red Obsession. (Warwick also helped to write Young Einstein.) It deservedly won the Audience Favourite Documentary at the 2021 Sydney Film Festival.
It’s a heartening and heartfelt story told with lots of empathy. It might have too much sentimentality for a documentary but it’s a collection of refugee stories, engagingly told in a way that will leave you uplifted. And thirsty for a glass of wine.
Con Nats, On The Screen
