Tipsy Turvy

Like a melodrama or a political tract--genres it sometimes resembles, in an honorable way--Jonathan Nossiter's documentary Mondovino has a villain you can hiss at. In fact, there are three.

Chief among them is wine tycoon Robert Mondavi, whom Nossiter visits at his sprawling headquarters in California's Napa Valley. Stone-faced and taciturn--he usually lets others do the talking for him--Mondavi is posed at a slight remove from Nossiter's camera, in partial shadow, like a Coppola mob boss.

Cast in the role of Mondavi's international hit man is dark-bearded, laughing Michel Rolland, a "flying winemaker" with clients in a dozen countries. Nossiter most often shows Rolland in the back seat of his chauffeur-driven Mercedes, talking on the phone and chortling over his own power as he prowls through the chateaus of Bordeaux. At each stop, he gives the same order: "Micro-oxygenate!"

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