Daddy Winebucks

With Hollywood awards season in full swing, I’ll admit to disliking these shows.  And not just because given my wife’s profession (Entertainment journalist, now Entertainment Webtrix) I have not been able to watch one with her for the last fifteen years as she’s always working.

No, my main problem is that most awards of this nature are just so grossly subjective and impossible to truly judge, that they’re simply unfair.  Certain films or TV shows, or actors or Costume Designers find themselves at the right place at the right cultural time, working on a project that has everything going for it and in return the public and critics respond.

In some of these cases, like the amazing “Slumdog Millionaire” it’s all deserved – in my subjective opinion – while others, (and I apologize to Heath Ledger wherever he is because I think he was a very gifted actor), ride a wave of Hollywood narcissism that awards for something noteworthy but not necessarily award worthy. Then again, there are those who feel he’ll be fully justified to win his Oscar posthumously and therein lies the problems with award shows.

Both Woody Allen and Bill Cosby have both decried them as an unfair barometer on talent.  For how can you really judge Penelope Cruz’s brilliant, funny turn as Maria Elena in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” against Kate Winslet’s Nazi guard in “The Reader?”  Was Ms. Winslet more convincing as a Nazi then Cruz was as a Spaniard?

(Editors Note:  Ms. Winslet is not a Nazi while Ms. Cruz actually is a Spaniard).

Yet the academy is forced each year to decide who was “better” in instances such as this.

This leads me to a thought I had last week.  That the wine business is a perfect industry for an awards show.  The reasoning being simple.  Rather than having to judge a comedy against a drama (much like trying to select the best wine of the year by drinking Cabernet from the US versus a Merlot from France) it’s much easier to pick five Pinot Noirs from Oregon, all made in the same general region by different winemakers and selecting a winner.

In this scenario all creativity started out on a level playing field, with artists working off the same canvas.  Think of it as giving five film directors the same script, with the same actors, etc. and judging it based on what the director was able to bring to the table.

The “Winey’s” could be given out in multiple varietal categories, while other technical awards could be given to bottle design, best writing on the back, best foreign wine, etc.  Then you could perhaps have a category for best winemaker, where the judges could select based on a collection of factors that went into a particular winemaker’s vintage for that year – I’m really liking this…

So picture if you will downtown Napa in the summer, wine luminaries stepping out of pick up trucks, dressed in their finest t-shirts and shorts, making their way onto a gravely, red, claylike “carpet” to the pop of flashbulbs.  Copia has been rechristined the Napa Wine Arts Theatre and as the crowd makes their way into the venue and the lights go down, the whole world watches an awards show that can be truly deemed fair.

Okay, wine entreprenuers (I’m looking at you, Vaynerchuk), this one’s on me.

I’m not sure we’ll get E! to cover it (sorry, Linda) but I cast the first vote for Food Network Coverage with Giadada DeLaurentis as host…

Who’s with me???