Max Koch Uncorked

Wine-soaked adventures through a twisted life…

Herzog Holiday Weekend Film-Fest With Pairings

Everything was going fine last weekend (President’s Day Weekend) until I suffered a terrible and VERY awkward spill in my Pilates class on Saturday morning. The fall wrenched my back out pretty sucky-like and so I was on pain killers and ice for most of the weekend. 

BUT THAT DIDN’T STOP ME FROM GOING TO A CIDER AND MEAD TASTING AT VENDOME WINE & SPIRITS!

By the way, do you know the difference between a cider and a mead? Well, mead comes from honey, like a honey wine, and cider is mead, I mean MADE from apples, usually…but also pears and pineapples, too, if your taste buds are ambitious. 

It’s okay. I get little confused myself…

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Jack is the beer, cider, and mead expert over at Vendome and he is just awesome. His zeal for the suds (and LEGOS) is off-the-charts enthuisiatic and so I asked him what a good German beer would be to pair with a 3-day festival of Werner Herzog films. At first he looked very confused, and so I explained that on holiday weekends – or any weekend the mood strikes us – the wife and I will switch off curating a little festival of films featuring a particular theme or actor/actress or director. So my turn was up and I chose Herzog mainly because I know my wife gets freaked out by vampire stuff and I’ve just been DYING to share his version of Nosferatu the Vampyre with her, because I know she’d appreciate it and not get too scared. (Okay, she was a little creeped out, but actually wound up enjoying the film very much. Personally, I think it’s one of Herzog’s greatest works.)

Jack pointed me in the direction of the Flensburger Pilsener from Flensburg in the Bundesland of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. This was a very crisp, refreshing lager that went great with Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, which is the story of a maniac in a white linen suit and Gary Busey hair – played by Herzog muse, Klaus Kinski, also Count Dracula – who goes a little mad in the Amazonian jungle trying to move a steamboat over a mountain to get to the rubber trees on the other side so he could then exploit them and make his fortune. At first, we were weary of the TWO HOUR AND THIRTY SEVEN MINUTE running time, but we actually wound up being very intrigued by it. Believe me, the Flensberger helped.

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The third Herzog I chose was his documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams which is currently streaming on Netflix. This one was a bit of a struggle to get through, because A.) I’m claustrophobic, and B.) Poor Werner was kind of limited in his ability to document his journey through the tight and slight Chauvet Cave in southern France, which contains the oldest human-painted images yet discovered. He was also working with a group of scientists and historians who weren’t exactly as colorful a character as, say, his best fiend, Klaus Kinski. But we did enjoy some meads with that one, including the cherry and Hops-infused Dwarf Invasion from the B. Nektar Meadery. I mean, I DO have a life-long obsession with Little People so that just worked out fine.

WINE PAIRINGS: Gosh, here I am going on about ciders and meads and beers and I forgot all about the Fangria we paired with Nosferatu. That was one we’d picked up at the Vampire Vineyards Tasting Room & Lounge back in 2014. It’s Sangria, of course, with just a bit more BITE. And it’s completely captivating. Just make sure it’s very-well chilled…much like the dense banks of fog that engulf Count Dracula’s castle on any given moonless night.

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Here’s to Herzog! And Happy Jack at Vendome!