DEAD MAIL (2024) Paired with the Best-Selling Wine in America

This special Halloween Horror episode was commisioned by our Produce-er, Jessica Maison! 

Did you know you could support the show and this Substack at the Produce-er level and commission your own episode? PLUS get a shout out in every episode!

Well, you can.

And special spotlight shout out for Jessica’s Substack here:

http://monsteroftheweek.substack.com

Chapters

• 0:00 In Person Wine and Movie Pairing This Halloween in Los Angeles!
• 2:33 Wine Trivia Question of the Week
• 3:42 Our First Produce-er Commissioned Episode!
• 4:56 DEAD MAIL - Intro and Trailer
• 8:41 Synopsis and Making Of
• 22:06 Wine: Massimo Clerico Ca' du Leria, Coste della Sesia Rosso 2020
• 25:52 Wine: Riunite and Bellei Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro Pietrascura
• 32:39 Riunite Commercial
• 33:20 We Try Riunite for the First Time
• 40:59 Final Thoughts on the Movie
• 48:52 Spotlight Produce-er Shout Out
• 50:46 Outtake - Anwer to the Wine Trivia Question!

Transcript

0:00

Happy Halloween, everybody. Come join the entertainment boys. We will be on October 31st, All Hallows Eve at curated wine shop, La Brea, mid city Los Angeles. We will be having our very first in-person wine and movie pairing. We will have a short film followed by a feature film. The short film is Casey Rogerson's terroir about a pinot that is to... die for. We will be pairing it with this Pino that is to die for, hopefully not to die for, but pretty close. Casey made this film when he was a student at Columbia University and it just won the best student short at Los Angeles Screamfest just this month. You can't see it anywhere else, so come see it here with us. Then we will follow that with another film you can't see anywhere else right this very moment. It's not streaming anywhere. Catherine Bigelow's feature solo directorial debut, Near Dark, with Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen. It is one of the greatest vampire movies ever made, if you haven't seen it. Come see it. We'll have four wines paired with these two films. You'll be able to sip them. You'll be able to screen the movies. Come relax. We will have some fun facts about these movies you probably didn't know. It'll be just like listening to one of our podcast episodes, except better, because you get to drink the wine and you get to see the films. 7 p.m. October 31st. Hope to see you there. Happy Halloween. Are you not Ventertained? Yes, sir! We'll have a real good time! He's Dave, and I'm Dallas, and this is Ventertainment. We have opinions on just about everything. Sometimes those opinions are spot on. Sometimes they go down easier with a glass of wine. This is entertainment, the wine and entertainment pairing podcast. To another wine and entertainment pairing for your entertainment, this is the podcast where we pair wine with entertainment. It's as simple as that. We always know what we like or dislike, but rarely know why. So what better way to learn about that than by comparing different wines to different types of entertainment and compare and contrast how they both hit us and affect us in the ways that they do. I'm Dallas, a professional writer and world builder. And I'm Dave, your WSET Level 3 certified wine professional. And now for the wine trivia question of the week. Which of these grapes came dangerously close to extinction after the phylloxoroblite in France, but was rediscovered in the 1990s mistakenly planted as Merlot? Bonus points, if you can name the country it was discovered in. Was it A, Timorasso B, Carmenere C, Mourvedre or D, Tempranillo. And just to be clear about this, this is a grape that was almost wiped out due to phylloxera, which was a root louse in France, but it already made its way to another country, but they thought those vines were Merlot vines, and the wine was close enough to Merlot to fool everybody for quite some time, and it was DNA testing in the 1990s, where they suddenly discovered it was something else, and it was either A, Timorasso B. Carmenere C. Mourvedre, or D. Tempranillo? We'll reveal the answer at the end of the episode, or if you're seeing this as part of a short video, check the comments. And now, onto this week's film, which was chosen by our producer, Jessica Maison. Did you know you could become a producer of this podcast? Dallas, did you know that? I did. And that by doing so, you get to commission one episode every year and tell us what to cover? Well, you can. You can sign up at our sub stack and subscribe at our producer tier, which also gets you a shout out on every single episode. sub stack is entertainmentstudios.com. So take a look if you'd like to support the podcast on that level and commission your own episode. Have us butcher your name whenever we record. It's more than worth it. Today's produce, I don't know, produce, today's producer, I was too clever for my own good, no, I can't pronounce it properly. Today's producer has her own substack, monsteroftheweek.substack.com, where she posts different short stories of monsters from across time and around the world and keeps readers up to date on her graphic novel and novel pursuits like Mary Shelley's School for Monsters, which is an amazing graphic novel, and the Plastic Girl Trilogy, which is an amazing trilogy of. And she's frankly just the sweetheart of a person. We cannot recommend her enough. And now I'll let Dallas introduce the film she chose for us this week. Why, thank you, Dave. You ever have any dead mail that's gone undelivered or that was unable to be returned? Well, if that's the case, then you likely owe a nod of appreciation to the dead letter office. The US Post dead letter office began in 1825 to deal with the undeliverable mail. By 1893, it had handed out 20,000 items, had handled 20,000 items a day, every day. Patty Lyle Collins was a long time employee of the office responsible for the redirection of an estimated 1000 letters a day and in 2006 approximately 90 million undeliverable as addressed or UAA items ended up in the dead letter office of the US Postal Service. When the rightful owners cannot be identified the correspondence is destroyed to protect customer privacy and enclosed items of value are removed. Now. You may be asking what this has to do with today's pairing. Well, it's pretty simple really. As the film we are discussing is Dead Mail a 2024 thriller horror by team Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaughey produced by Alarmist Entertainment and Contact Light Films. That's right. From Dead Grapes in today's Wine Trivia question to Dead Mail, directors Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaughey are an experienced duo originally based in Missouri, though both of sensory located to Los Angeles. They hit the scene with their 2020 film BAB, B-A-B, which won best feature at the Nightmare Fest Festival. The two also direct separately with McConaughey stepping into a 2022 solo project called Sheep's Clothing. which was highly regarded as he pulled triple duty as writer, director, and cinematographer. Then came 2024's Dead Mail. Dead Mail premiered at South by Southwest in 2024, then on to TIFF, the Toronto Film Festival, the Brooklyn Horror Festival, and do you pronounce that? Stiges It's Stiges okay. I've never known how to pronounce that festival. I always just know it by. If it is Steeges or Stikes, you're wrong. While racking up consistent quote unquote fan favorite nods. Following that run, the film released on shutter April 18th of this year in conjunction with the streamers halfway to Halloween offering. you a mislabeled package. I'm wondering what course of action I could take. It's digital too. We'll figure out where to redirect it. And what if by chance you cannot? That's when things get interesting. So if someone's playing a dirty job, we have this fellow, a genius really Jaspar, who can track down anything. You don't pay me to be a crime detective. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this opportunity. Tell me what to write. You someone else in that room. Don't go. Don't leave me. Synopsis. On a sparsely populated Midwestern road, a man crawls and mumbles his way to, of all things, a postal box at the end of the driveway where he, against the odds, drops a tear and blood-stained letter begging for help. The letter makes its way to a rural post office and lands in the hands of its genius dead letter investigator named Jaspar But as Jaspar investigates, he meets another man named Trent who has vested the secret interest in the note. Trent takes drastic measures to retrieve the letter in order to keep a secret that his synthesizer building partner is locked in his basement for dishonoring Trent's fantasy of a business partnership bordering on romantic relationship. That's right. Now, as far as the production is concerned, the film style is wonderfully analog with a decidedly 80s treatment, 80s Peoria, Illinois, to be exact, even though it was filmed in and around Los Angeles, predominantly due to the fact that LA prop houses had most of the vintage items that were needed. According to the directors, the part part of what made a period piece possible on the budget they had was that they did not have to glamorize or go for a glamorized glitzy 1980s. It was very accessible. It's very Midwestern authentic as opposed to the more cliche stylized 80s you see in other films. And that reminds me of the internet meme that came in the wake of Stranger Things where you see the what we think the 80s looked like. And it's all the hyper stylized neon and candy colored decorations and toys and posters and whatever. And then underneath that it would be like what the 80s actually looked like. And it's all this doll drab mahogany beige vanilla colors. And I'm like, yes, that was my childhood home anyways. It didn't have all that neon shit. Yeah, a little note on a little further note on the production actually. It's amazing reading some of the notes that are out there about the production because they really paid close attention to getting literally every frame right because the budget was fairly small. Of course, that's a note to all you filmmakers out there. Do something that's executable within your skill set. And again, because all the prop houses in LA have just backlogs and backlogs of period 80 specific stuff, it makes sense that it was easier for these guys to film in and around LA, even though right now we're in the midst of a filming crisis because it is so expensive to film in and around LA. at some point I'd like to get a hold of these guys and ask them. functionally how they pulled this off knowing that it's so cost prohibitive to film in LA or can be at least. mean according to them it really was like they went to the prop houses and they were like, it's all here Yeah, and they were like apparently LA has been that good at keeping all its vintage shit, which makes sense in LA Whereas anywhere else it's like you're just going to sort of keep houses and you're of piece by piece and whatnot. The directors were also able to use some of their own family's 80s artifacts as well to round out their needs. They originally wanted to shoot in Peoria, Illinois, but it ultimately made the most sense, as we said, to shoot in LA for all the reasons we just said. It's where most of them lived, in fact, where they had access to these great sort of... prop houses and storage facilities and even some pre-made sets, which we call sort of pre-standing or standing sets around here. Though they nevertheless had to fabricate a lot of the sets as well. The production, visuals and textures here, in my opinion, are all really top-notch owed to the skill and planning of the production manager, Peyton Jane. um And if you have a little time, uh go and check out their socials and their footprint because... It's some beautiful stuff and it definitely shows up in this production. Bacanahe Cinematography seems to lean in heavily on the filmmaking techniques and shots of the features from the late 70s and early 80s, including a distinct grittiness to the finished product. uh They used a digital red Komodo camera, but then fitted it with vintage Zeiss lenses that were used in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Costumes by Carey and Savistano further the authenticity of this world and film. onto the music and the score. This film leans heavily into sound as mood amplifier. Usually the over reliance of underscoring annoys the absolute hell out of me. But in this case, it mostly seems organic and doesn't detract from the tension or momentum of the arcs. um As Dave will attest, I will often turn a film off or walk out if every frame is underscored and that when I say underscore because here's the thing there's an art to underscore. uh When we did the Marshmallow horror film, go look at that episode from a couple months back where he complained about, I didn't even notice the score. That me batshit crazy because I, know, I'm, I'm, anyway, we won't get into that. We won't go off into that tangent at the moment. Anyway, the filmmakers pulled multiple duties on the film as much of the score was done by DeBoer and McConaughey themselves, but also included classical pieces that were used to increase the tension of the world. The duo was in fact a part of an indie rock group called Jumbling Towers. which I love that name. You can still go and check out some of their old stuff too. yeah, right? I did. Not bad, not bad. And alright. I'm glad they became filmmakers. They're much better at that. uh And it is in fact how their creative partnership began. DeVore and McConaughey have stated in interviews that the collection of 70s analog synthesizers they had were often missing keys, which resulted in their tinkering with uh circuit boards. They've also credited the work of Wendy Carlos due to their bonding early on over her clockwork orange theme, as well as synth pioneer Janet Beat. whose music they licensed for some of the tinkering synth sounds in this film. soundtrack also includes traditional classical pieces like Purcell's King Arthur Suite, Act III Prelude, Debussy's Suite, Burgamesque, as well as pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach. Yeah, and just as describing that tinkering sound, uh in the movie, they're trying to build a new synth chip for new synth sounds in new synthesizers. And so they're playing around with how to get exact sounds right. And so you hear that quote unquote tinkering. as a matter of fact, one of the big issues in early synths uh was that the woodwind sound sounded so inauthentic, at least to their early ears. so that was like the big sort of problem for all the synth engineers early on. It was the exact. this character ostensibly kind of finds more or less kind of a patch or solution to kind of treat that. And that's kind of his art. Yeah. And now let's talk about the cast, the filmmakers who were inspired by discovering the mere existence of a dead letter office in the actual USPS. According to Kyle McConaughey, Joe deserves credit for the origin. We were writing our first film and he was like, hey, I read about this dead letter office. It's a real place that investigates undeliverable mail. And we were like, God, we've got to develop an idea for that. So they thought about it and came up with the opening scene of at the time it was a woman crawling out of the house in the middle of Midwest. ah Kyle told Joe about that and he said, I like it, but what if Josh Brolin is playing it instead of a woman? And Josh Brolin became a synthesizer engineer that we wrote for our friend Sterling and we just went on from there. The role was for the most part written specifically for lead actor Sterling Macer Jr., which can I just say was 60 years old when they filmed this movie and holy shit, does he not look that at all. Yeah, Dows is done. He was 60 years old. Man. I know, not a wrinkle on the goddamn man. Don't crack. What the? I just I'm the one. No, I'm still happy to be white. Sorry. OK. But he does not look 60. And I had to double take. And I did a deeper Google search dive because I was like, that can't be right. um And yeah, that's when he's been and he's been acting for that long. So he's been acting for quite some time. Graduated high school in the 80s. So again, according to the directors. Quote, had met Sterling, oh, I'm sorry, we had started writing a little bit before we met Sterling, but then I moved to Los Angeles and was lucky enough to work on Sterling's last directorial effort, Double Down, and we became fast friends. He and I have worked together on several films, and when we went back to Deadmail, we were like, my gosh, Sterling has to play Josh, or okay, Josh Brolin. Sterling is not only an amazing actor, he's a great musician. And he's just so good in the physical choices he makes. And as soon as we told him about the role, Sterling started watching YouTube videos about soldering and electrical engineering. So we knew it was the right fit. According to Kyle DeBoer, quote, Sterling probably won the part on the first day of our first feature, Bab. We were staying at an Airbnb in a remote desert area, and there was this old piano. And he just sat down and started playing jazz on it. And it was like, oh, you can do this too? And like Kyle said, he's so great with all kinds of physical acting. Dart throwing, he can do it. There's a million things this guy can do." Unquote. The rest of the cast came from people, friends they already knew and had worked with or friends of friends, creating a cast that was more of a happy family before cameras started to roll than is typical. But the easy chemistry between everyone is frankly apparent. John Fleck, who plays the mysterious and obsessive Trent. is an actor and performance artist who in 1990 near the height of the AIDS crisis in the US was attacked by the US government as one of the quote unquote NEA four or National Endowment of the Arts four. When funding to three queer artists and a prominent straight feminist was reversed by the National Endowments for the Arts, they won their case against the NEA in the lower courts only to have it ultimately reversed by the Supreme Court. Yes, they sucked then too. All of which you can watch in the documentary. John Fleck is who you want him to be from 2019. I also want to shout out Thomas Boykin as Jaspar, the man who runs the dead male office in the opening of this film. my God. He's our ostensible protagonist for the first third of the movie. And man, he had such a natural screen presence and delivery. really liked his performance, even though I can't entirely put my finger on why it was just. restrained in all the right ways. It was one of those performances where he never seems like he was acting, but neither was his performance flat or dull the way amateurs can sometimes come across. So that brings us to the themes of this movie. And Dallas and myself had slightly different takes on what the core theme of the film is. For me, I found the film to mostly be about loneliness. Every major character had incredible skills. Jaspar with a dead male office. Spencer as a synthesizer engineer, Trent with his money and means, the European guy with his hacker spy skills. We didn't even talk about the European guy. He was a Norwegian American, I believe that the directors knew. And this was the first time they got to cast him as European. So he got to use his actual accent. And he's this hacker spy skills guy. Every character, even without their amazing skills, they were lonely, utilizing those skills in a void. And trying to fix this, to balance their ambitions with their attempts at socialization all led to the horrors that ultimately befell them. But Dallas, you had a different take. I did, uh I get the loneliness angle for sure. But I think also, and probably more primary for me was this film is about obsession. Many of the great turns in character and plot are spurred on by obsession. Many characters are in fact engaged in some manner of obsession that leads them to either solving or perpetrating a crime. Second to that, the other themes the film touches on are isolation, of course, dysfunctional relationships and unrequited love. And specifically with, obsession you look at Trent right he is utterly obsessed with this relationship he had in his youth right ah you look at the lead character he is obsessed with solving this uh this sort of um cork not court that's a brand sent. um Send the issue. Yeah, you get Jaspar who is obsessed in his own functional way with solving these mysteries. And then you get the two female characters at the end who kind of spur on Act 3. They are obsessed with finding out, you know, solving this sort of mystery of this letter and finishing Jaspar's work. Right. And Jaspar's fate. That's right. uh So I think it is ultimately about sort of obsession, but I absolutely get the loan. Yeah. All right. So now let's talk about the wine parents. The reason you're all really here. Who cares about the movie? What are we doing in with this thing? And I went with a wine and music pairing route, something that has actually, believe it or not, a decent chunk of actual controlled studies behind it. So I looked up what kind of wine pairs best with synthesizer music, what with the story subject matter, but also it's synth heavy soundtrack. And the recommendation was wines with elevated minerality and earthiness that went best with synth and piano music. All right. So I still wanted a red to match the heavier, more dour and serious elements of this story. You know, it's it is still it's on the shutter channel. It is a horror movie. It's not a scare too much of a scare you. There's no jump scares. Thriller dominant. But but there is a seriousness. There's a heaviness. There is a Well, for lack of a better term, I'll go with Dallas's Dread. There is a dread here, and there is a lives are at stake. Like this is, there is that element of the horror movie where it's survival is a part of what's happening here. But don't go in expecting like horror or monsters or scary, scary, scary. It's not that, but this is still a very impressive movie in many ways. We're gonna talk about that as our final thoughts, but first going back to the line, I wanted the red to match those tones, to match those elements. um The best earthy reds tend to be Italian, at least in my book. So then I just needed a mineral forward, earthy Italian red. And I found that in this wine called Massimo Clerico Ca' du Leria Coste della Sesia Rosso 2020. All right, so break that down. Massimo Clerico is the winery. The Ca' du Leria, this wine is produced from the Vigna Leria Vineyard site in Piedmont. And this is their Rosso 20, so Ca' du Leria which I think is like the Laria house, the Leria something like that, 2020, the 2020 vintage is the one I had. And this is from the Vinegar area of Vineyard site in Piedmont, Piedmont being the area where Barolo and Barbaresco hail from, the Nebbiolo grape based wines of the world. This one is a blend of Nebbiolo, which is 50%, a grape called Croatina at 30 % and Vespolina at 20%. Those last two being fruitier and spicier than Nebbiolo respectively, Vespelina being fruitier, I'm sorry, Croatina being a bit fruitier, Vespelina being a bit spicier, and both with softer tannins. Nebbiolo is known for its very harsh tannins, which always, it allows it to age, but can be, it unapproachable when young. This blend was right in that sweet spot, like this movie, some rusticness, some harshness, but overall softer and drinkable right now. The vineyard sits on an ancient seabed. The soils are very poor and porous, which permits the vines to extend deeply into the soil. And the result is a line of intense minerality with a fresh, lively presence on the palate. Aged for one year in oak barrels, not new, they don't say whether it's old or neutral, but used oak barrels. So it's not giving too much oak flavor, too much oak influence. And it's got that minerality. It had that earthiness. I drank the second half of that bottle. while watching the movie. had a feeling reading up on the movie. That's what I wanted beforehand. And yeah, it was perfection. I did not need to look anywhere else. And that is once again, folks, the Massimo Clerico, Ca' du Leria, Coste della Sesia Rosso 2020. I will write that down below. It'll be like the chapter header of this podcast. You can go look at how that's spelled and go look it up. So how about you, Dallas? I took a rather circuitous kind of route into pairing this week. um So I'm just gonna tease it a little bit here because there's a bit of a bump coming at the end, which I think some of our fans will enjoy, not for the reasons they think. ah I know what he's about to reveal, so this is true. I wasn't going to show him honestly. was going to surprise him on camera. was like, Anyway, so the grapes from my class of pairing come from zones in both the Emilia Ronagna and Lombardy. Archaeological evidence tells us that the Etruscans cultivated this vine. In Rome, it was prized for its productivity and high yield, and Cato the elder himself stated that two thirds of an acre could yield 300 amphora. of wine. That's still pretty impressive. The vines of this grape are trained high above the ground to prevent mildew and mold and are usually trained to climb poplar. And by the way, I just realized him for our clay vessels. They're like porcelain vessels for the wine, just in case anyone didn't know that. This varietal, of course, is known as Lambrusco. And you might know where this is going, knowing it's Lambrusco. It's not a wine that is called Lambrusco. Let's put it that way. But go ahead. Keep going. But just for some context, uh the reason I chose this, um this film is decidedly 80s. me. Harkin's back. You know, it's interesting. It's more 70s. here's the thing. What happens at the end of a very acute decade, the seven years is a very acute decade, you get about three or four years of carryover. From about 78 to 82, I agree. Because even by 78, you're starting to see the 80s show up. So what ends up happening is people do hold on to their decor and fashion for years after it's kind of gone out of style. So by the 80s, people are still looking, things are still looking like people are stuck in the 70s, late 70s. So um it is decidedly 80s for me, particularly when we get into Trent's home um and also the cars. It's just such a great production design. It is simple, but it's also... The movie does look like it was unearthed from somewhere. It really really It they shot it on a red camera. It really looks Remember that red Komodo. So, but they did every trick of the trade. They wanted that film grain in the picture and it's there. I don't pretend to know how easy that is or isn't with the tools that filmmakers have these days, all the digital tools and whatnot, but it was shot on a red camera, which is not known for looking anything but very digital. And this movie looks nothing like digital. looks like. they like shutter discovered this movie from the 70s or 80s, low budget 80s and were like, look at this gem that like was maybe big on the festival circuit in the 80s or something like that back in the day and we're rediscovering it again. Now it looks like a rediscovered It really does. And uh it is a gem in general. Go check it out, please. ah But. uh So watching this film I was definitely in that 80's mindset and I needed something that you know had I watched this film because it did feel like you said was on earth had I watched this film as an adult. Late at night in the 80's what would I would why would I likely have been. um And so then I started to think what there is Ernest and Julia Gallo what are the sort of ad. Noises from my childhood yeah what what wines were the adults drinking. Ernest and Julio Gallo. There were. Chiasco jugs of Chianti. Yes. Yep, the straw basket Chianti's right. Yeah um and a few others which should wrote shall remain nameless because they are just disgusting ah but friend frenzy think that was Franzia Franzia uh but reunity it was reunity. Riunite. Anyway, I just remember seeing these ads and I was like, don't think I've ever I couldn't remember if I ever actually tried it. Um but it was the number one selling wine in America for many years which we'll get to later. Anyway, uh so that's technically Riunite is made out of. At their best they are uh seco or dry with barely sweet varieties known as semi-seco which also gives rise to the frizzante um or the sparkling presentation of lamb brusco. I initially thought about pairing uh lamb brusco, gras, parossa. I love that word. Yeah, that's great word. I've never I've honestly that's a new one to me. So there uh primary sort of presentations and the grass or us I love that we're us G R A S P A R O S S A. Graspar-par-grasp-parrosa. Yeah. But it has an inky purple hue, which you'll find with a lot of these. is, it has pronounced floral, strawberries, plum and cherry. I tried from K &L, the Bellei Lambrusco Grasparrosa, the Castelvetro Pietrascura Dry, which you can find again at Total Wine and K &L for between 18 and $25. And it worked well. It had that kind of It's dry, but it presents sweet, of course. just go into your local wine shop, play this part of the podcast of us saying the word and be like, this, do you have this? Like I have no idea how to ask for this or how to say it. They're probably even saying it wrong. probably are saying it. There go. There we go. I know but then I saw another bottle on the bottom shelf with uh not just the funny though not just the bottom shelf the bottom shelf in the very last row in the corner of the store where it probably belongs ah and price tag. And blaring red color. It is another Lambrusco. And as I already said, uh being a child of the 80s and 90s, I was familiar with all the ads, you know, nonsense. Our minds are filled with that shit, of course. You play the beginning of a jingle and I guarantee anyone who was of age or came of age in the 80s will probably be able to finish it for you. Nope. But again, I wasn't sure if I'd ever had it so I said screwed it and screw it and I'm pair this bottle of wine with oh this film even if the pairing is off. Even if is off, lovely. are going to have a sip of this. We may not be able to have it on camera. I'm not sure. We'll see it's in the freezer. He brought it over warm. I'm like, hell no. We're gonna, you know, it goes well over ice. I was kind of it. But a little history on this particular specifically this wine, Rianini Lambrusco from 1976 until the year 2000. This Lambrusco was the number one wine. Imported wine in the US peaking in 1985 with 11.5 million cases sold. That is phenomenal on one hand. On the other is like yikes. But apparently people enjoy it. is a good Let's be frank about this here. So yeah, is the Riunite and we're gonna taste a little here in a minute. It's going to be sweet. That is the point of Riunite. It is not a dry, quote unquote, unsweet wine. It's just sweetie one. It's just a sweetheart of a wine, which is why Americans were like, ooh, more of this, please. And the jingle was kind of like the Mentos jingle. It's like it caught on. People loved it. Yeah, yeah, the Riccola, the Riunite the Mentos. It was one of those jingles that just took over. so everyone bought the goddamn stuff. you need y'all. Which is what we're gonna do right now, in matter of You want to do some on ice? All right, all hold up. Edit point. We are back. This is... on ice in Lambrus It says on the back, fizzy and refreshing. OK. With hints of berries, just hints. Just hints. We'll see. uh Vine grower owned. OK. right. OK. And then hashtag. What does that say? Reunitesense? Reuniteonize. There it is. And. does it have a sweet? Yeah. So the sweet meter, and by the way, even with sweet O meter, low, medium, and high, this is medium. And folks, on the back it also says 8 % alcohol by volume. Just a fun fact, that tells you this is medium sweet or fairly sweet. because you cannot get low alcohol like that unless you stop fermentation from completing and allow the sugar to remain in the original grape juice. No grapes that make wine, even if you pick them early and they're a little under ripe, they're still gonna be, you're gonna be in that like 10 % to 12 % range on the low end, maybe as low as nine or 9.5 in extreme cases and you could still not be sweet at nine and 9.5. you get down to eight or even below eight, which some wines are as well, Manischewitz. We have Trader Joe's Pumpkin Spice Chardonnay, which is 6.4. I did, I did. And so that ABV is always gonna tell you a little bit about that sweet factor. If it gets low, it is a sweet wine, because that is how the sugar is in there. All right. Cheers! Here is to uh coming of age. Finally tasting something that was ubiquitous in my youth. It smells like nothing. Nothing. It smells like nothing. Yeah. Yeah, that's not bad. That's not bad. Holy shit. It's not bad. You know what? One. That's a great little drink. I'm not calling it wine, but that's a great little drink. on ice. I think warm, this might come across as too cloying and sweet, but on ice, it's not even that sweet. It's restrained. Holy shit. Everything about this is restrained. One, you can taste the dry Lambrusco version underneath, which is very like earthy touch of dark fruit, just a touch. Lambrusco is not known for being super fruity per se. It's much more earthy and dark fruit, but in this very tame, very restrained way. It's very pleasant. then yeah, that medium sweet is there. oh But it's it's restrained. I'm impressed. was excited. Riunite. Now look, I don't know one they might have changed the recipe to catch up with modern palates and maybe Anyway, we got this bottle from the Dome, which is notorious for having bottles on their shelves. That is spoiled. That are spoiled. Cause they keep it too warm in there. In the summer you go in there, it's like 80 degrees inside and the man, like, I mean, they have like old sub turn in there and I'm like, what the are you doing? Like all of this shit's going bad in the, in that heat. I get it. is not, as you said, the sweetness is almost perfect. I hate you so much. perfect. Yeah. If you're going to have some sweetness in there, this almost yeah, it's almost not it doesn't stand out. In most wines, if there's some sweetness to it, it's like the thing you notice not here. It's not doesn't stand out. I think it's there but you don't it's not like ooh, it's sweet. That's not the thing that you notice. This makes sense. Have you ever had a natural grape juice that doesn't have added sugar? There's that natural kind of, and not necessarily incredibly ripe grapes, but a grape juice. Yeah, it's... You know, these days I eat a lot of yogurt that has no added sugar to it. But yogurt is something like all milk has sugar in it. It's like all dairy has sugar. Just they're relatively low. And it's only when you add sugar that it gets like sweet, sweet, similar. Where it's like, you can taste some sweetness, but it's very gentle. And yeah, this is shockingly not bad at all. I could drink this on any summer's day. Okay, folks, this might be the revelation of the episode. Ryu Nidi is good. It's actually quite nice. How? How? And it's exactly what I would want as a wine drink early in the day. You guys are right. You guys are right. You're actually onto something here, okay? I see why this is the number one imported wine for the year 74 to 2000. It still continues to sell. It is so accessible, but it's really satisfying. The alcohol level isn't insanely high. I mean, you could drink this entire bottle and probably be a little okay. Yeah. Yeah? And yes, we are Americans. Shut up. Do you know I mocked and laughed deeply when I saw this bottle? Yeah. You're an asshole. We drink wine, we're assholes. This is pretty much how it works. You've all seen Sideways. This is how it works. Now to be fair, there have been lots of like really popular brands in America. It is hard not to be judgmental about them, but this is nice. is a great surprise. This is the best little surprise I've had in a long time. All right. As we continue to process this final thoughts on the movie Dead Mail, what do we think? Anything we haven't said yet? Want me to start? I will just say, you know, this movie, our producer, Jessica Mason, she had kind of DM'd me or, or uh sub stack note. commented on something. can't remember how she told me about this movie, but many months ago she told me about this movie. And I put it on my watch list. And of course, the never ending watch list. But it was always also something that someone um recommended. So I'm like, okay, a little more priority than normal, but I still hadn't gotten around to it. But it looked very intriguing. And horror films, of course, dime a dozen out there these days. The good ones that people recommend, I'm like, okay, cool. But then you also kind of cherish that. You're like, oh, this is gonna be a good experience. So you kind of hold on to it a little bit. This movie still took me by surprise because it wasn't what I was expecting. I didn't realize it was gonna be quite this retro, but retro in a way that isn't trying to be retro, right? It's not like Stranger Things. It's show you the 80s. Right, it's not trying to show you the 80s or whatever kind of field. It's just trying to take place in that era. um And then the movie's just a movie and it's like a low budget movie that would have been made then, but a low budget movie that would have been made then. And there's no sending up any of the ticks or elements that you would find in those kinds of movies. It's just straight up like, let's make this look like it was shot on film around that time in that actual era. And these people actually live in that era. And then it plays everything remarkably straightforward. Though, I mean, which isn't to say it doesn't have a little bit of a sly humor to it. Especially between the main two characters and their relationship and the guy trying to escape and our main bad guy is I mentioned earlier that there's almost a pseudo romantic side to the relationship like he had the way he gets obsessive about the synthesizer maker like there is something there where the guy is a character and that is played up a little bit, but it's also very serious um so this movie You know put it on it's not Don't put it on if you need action, if you need thrills that literally thrill you off your seat, uh horror or jump scares or anything like that. This is a sedate movie that is very well made. um everything about it impressed me. uh Jessica, you were right. Thank you for commissioning this because that's the joy of getting a commission like this. uh to Jessica, we have two things we now. and Riunite. Jessica, go try some Riunite. The last time she was on the show once and she brought a Trader Joe's wine. So this is, and it was just actually quite good, Figment PH. I've seen it still at Trader Joe's. It's like a Zinfandel based blend coming out of Paso. this Riunite, yeah, Jessica, you're gonna like this. Try some Riunite. to uh all the episodes from like June through September. Whatever the movie, the book, the comic, whatever. You're fucking Riunite. Oh yeah, yeah, whole catalog. So different Reunities. Here we go. Some of them might actually be bad though, so we'll have to try. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, final thoughts. see. I think for me the film is started as a very solid thriller as we said, but it definitely quickly ramps up into kind of the character study. Cause you know, even though it jumps POV to a certain degree, I'm still a little upset that I didn't get to spend an entire film with the character Jaspar. Cause that character sounds fantastic. He's so good. It's so good. He's so good. I would love a spin off of his origins. It's. um That's right. That's right. You can do that now. um can be the supernatural element in the next one. Okay, I don't see that. Yeah, I like that. Male in D. But I think this film just stylistically fires on all cylinders. Every department of this filmmaking team is playing, you know. on level 10, the hair, makeup, music, cinematography, you know, and it all boils down to very intricate, detailed production design. And on top of that, you get great performances. On top of that, you've got great writing, good direction, all the things. So this film punches so far above its weight for me. um And it could have gone left if they'd done what Dave was talking about and tried to sort of illustrate the 80s for you. It would have been a bunch of nonsense and it would have detracted from what is a damn fine film. So I'm kind of excited to see what these guys do in the future. Ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto. And by the way, guys, not too much ice in your Riunite. It does dilute quickly. So one ice cube with a decent amount of or just refrigerate it. I'm actually, this is diluting so quickly. I'm going to say just refrigerate your Riunite, no on ice, no on ice. It becomes too much nothing if you dilute it with too much water. So that's my recommendation there. All right, folks. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back in a couple of weeks with another wine and entertainment pairing, Foyol Entertainment. And don't forget to check us out on our sub stack from entertainmentstudios.com. That is where you can check us out, interact with us. We do articles, we do extra bonus episodes. We do extra bonus, we do all sorts of stuff on our sub stack. We're part of film stack and wine stack over there. So can get lots of wine stuff, lots of film stuff. If you want to, we're interacting with other filmmakers over there. So come check us out. We have a film stack. Discord that has just launched if you want to be part of the Filmstack Discord community. uh And also this Friday, you heard this at the top of the episode, but I also wanted to mention here as part of the internal part of the episode, we have our very first in-person wine and movie pairing happening at Curated Wine Shop on La Brea, Mid-City LA. We have a short film and a feature film and we have four wines we are pairing specifically curated for these two films. Short film is... Terroir about a Pinot noir that is to die for. Brand new short film by Casey Rogerson, the just one best student film at the LA ScreenFest this month. You cannot see this short film anywhere else. It is still on its festival run, but we have permission to show it October 31st, 7 p.m. at Curated Wine Shop. And that will be followed by Kathryn Bigelow's solo feature, directorial debut, Near Dark. You know, one of the best vampire movies ever made. Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen, Jeanette Goldstein. all from aliens, they reunited for Near Dark, brought by Catherine Bigelow. This is also a movie that right now in the States is not streaming anywhere. You can't even buy it, I don't believe, right now. So come see it there, because you can't see it anywhere else for this Halloween. That is 7 PM, October 31st, curated wine shop on La Brea, Mid-City, LA. We hope to see you there. And don't forget that at... are substack of entertainmentstudios.com. You can become a producer like Jessica Maison and get a shout out every episode. So a shout out to our first three producers. And since we have a standing microphone for the first time ever, here we go. Our first three producers are Jessica Maison the commissioner of Dead Mail in this episode. Oh yeah, we got some dancing behind me. Here we go, Jessica. You can find Jessica at monsteroftheweek. Monsteroftheweek.substack.com where Jessica writes about different monsters and keeps you up to date on all her novel and graphic novel projects. We also have Paul Kalemkiarian and an OG wine podcaster for Wine Talks with Paul K. His podcast is so much better than this one. If you like this one, you will love his. Go check out Paul Kalemkiarian and Wine Talks with Paul K. And then last but not least, have Kate Reuschel Kate Reuschel of survivesonwine.substack.com. Survives on wine. Isn't that the perfect Halloween substack to follow? Survives on wine. With Kate Reuschel, she does these amazing visual tasting notes that look like blood splattered on paper on parchment. It's a perfect thing to go check it out. Kate Reuschel, survivesonwine.substack.com. Thank you to all our producers. You guys rock. You guys rock. And we will check you next time, guys. We're out. Later people. I forgot to give you the wine trivia question of the week answer. I am recording this a lot later. People are already sleeping, so I'm gonna do this a little bit quietly. Blame the Riunite It's only 8 % alcohol, but there's something about it. It's like I have not been sipping it all night long. Anyway, the answer to the wine trivia question of the week. Which grape almost went extinct during the Phloxera Blight in France, but then was found in the 1990s in another country? when they thought they were planting Merlot and the answer in three, two, one, it is B, Carmenere. Carmenere is one of the great red grapes of Chile. That is where they found it. And Chile was actually selling it as Merlot for quite some time. I actually stumbled across a giant 1.5 liter Magnum bottle of Chilean Merlot from 1985, which would have probably been Carmenere. The vines went over there. They thought it was Merlot. The wine was kind of sort of like Merlot. They thought it was just, it just grew differently in Chile. So it was like a funky kind of Merlot because Carminiere has this little like smokiness and spiciness that Merlot tends to lack. But Carminiere, it used to be one of the original six great grapes of Bordeaux along with Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petite Verdeux and Malbec. But now it is... No more Carmenere here. I think they grow a little bit of it in France these days, but for the most part, no, it's pretty much gone from Bordeaux these days and it is in Chile. We grow a little bit of it here in the States. I love California Carmenere here. I had a Washington Carmenere here not too long ago. That was amazing. Carmenere here is the best. If you haven't tried some, go find some. All right, back to my Riunite mean to pour by this last glass of really needy down the sink. So I've had way too much tonight. No more Riunite for me. Ciao!