Blood Into Wine, is a documentary about Maynard James Keenan and his friend Eric Glomski who went into the wine making business in Arizona. I was a little hesitant on watching this movie at first because I wondered how could a movie be about wine that is 90 minutes long be any good. However, from the very beginning I thought it was funny with its dry humor, and got me hooked to watch the rest of the movie.
Maynard, whom most people have heard of used to be a part of the band Tool, that has sold thousands of records throughout the years. However later in his career, he decided to give music and break and move towards a new passion of wine making. This documentary follows him throughout his winery, explaining his entire process of his new passion.
Because wine making is completely different than being a rock star, many people questioned why Maynard would even want to go into wine making in the first place. However, Maynard explained how it was not just some short phase of being bored with his music career; instead he found a true passion for wine when he was drinking wine with the right food and the right place. This is very interesting because wine can have different effects of different people in various ways. Sometimes just the type of atmosphere and mood a person is in can affect how they will like the wine. For example, if someone had just heard great news and wanted to drink wine with a celebratory dinner and the person loves how the wine tastes, it may not just be because of the wine. Maynard was also asked in the documentary, why he thinks people in general like to drink wine. Maynard had a hippie response, saying that a grape is like a DNA strand with its complexity and how far it has evolved in history. He also gave a second response that people like to get drunk. I believe these are two very accurate responses about wine in general. Wine has been around for an extremely long time compared to a lot of things on earth today. The grape is one of the most complex fruits, and there are multiple different types of grapes as well. In addition people like to be happy and socialize, and wine can help people let loose and get into that type of mindset.
Arizona is another major focus of this documentary. The town in which Maynard and Eric decided to grow a vineyard is right outside of Jerome, AZ. This because extremely difficult in the wine making business, because Arizona is not known for wine at all and has a completely different climate than California. In addition, not that many people have tried growing wine in Arizona before, so therefore there is no one to learn from, and they have to put money into experimenting and changing a few things in order to try and become successful. I believe that this says a lot about how wine has changed throughout history. Especially with New World wines, it is now not so much out of the ordinary to branch out and for wine makers to try different things to make their own name for themselves. This is extremely different from Old World wines, where there are strict rules and government agencies controlling the labeling policy, as well as the wine making process in order for a certain wine to be made from a specific region. Jerome, AZ is located in northeast Arizona on the side of a mountain. The subsoil of where they are growing grapes has soil that may have possibly been an ancient lake bed. Some of the rocks are very smooth due to possible erosion sediment of a river. This is very interesting because this type of soil could have a great effect on how the grapes will grow and taste. Maynard’s business partner Eric was the experienced wine grower from California. Yes, he did know how the whole grape growing wine process worked, however he had to fix a few things here and there to adjust to the different environment like humidity, mid-summer monsoons, and loosing vines to cold winters.
Throughout the documentary, they talk about the different phases of the grape growing process. One of these seasons they talk about is the pruning season. This occurs in late winter and early spring. Here a person goes around the vineyard and trims some of the vines in order for them to be ready to grow correctly when the weather starts to become more warm. Around two buds are left for each branch, and the vines can even be tasted to see if they are sweet and ready to grow successfully. Another part of the grape growing process that the movie talks about is Veraison. This occurs in late summer, where some of the grapes on the vines are still green. These grapes will eventually darken over time. This is very interesting because it helps the audience learn about the grape growing process. Maynard even says that he is still learning how this works correctly, and it will most likely take him about two decades to really be able to master the knowledge of the process on his own. This just goes to show that making wine does not only cost a lot of money, however it takes quite amount of time as well.
Lastly, not only does Maynard have his own vineyard, he has a winery were he makes the wine, and has a store to promote and sell the wine as well. This adds in a whole other concept to wine. The business side of wine can require a whole new set of knowledge. There are strict selling and labeling guidelines, as well as just being able to successfully understand the consumers. Most of the time in the wine making business, one must lose a lot of money, or invest a lot of money, before any type of profit is made. This also happens over a long period of time before one receives any type of returns. This is because certain wines may take five to seven years to mature. This documentary does a nice job of portraying this concept.
Overall, Blood Into Wine, is a very interesting, and funny documentary. I feel that it can entertain to wide range of audience; people who do not know very much about wine, and for people who understand wine. The humor that is brought into the movie also makes it entertaining on top of being knowledgeable as well. I would definitely recommend Blood Into Wine, to any level of wine drinker.
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