Reality television and the world of wine collide for the first time in a new US series which gives 12 men and women the chance to launch their own wine brand.
The six-part series of 'The Winemakers' airs on the US public broadcast network PBS next month, replete with the usual reality mix of tears, tantrums, melodrama – and eliminations.
The wine-based 'Big Brother' sees a cast of six men and six women – lawyers, teachers, engineers and wine retailers – endure a series of challenges depicting wine life from the grape to the bottle.
They spend an exhausting 48 hours working the harvest in Paso Robles, California, work shifts at a wine tasting bar and put their wine knowledge to the test in a Q&A with the panel of judges.
The winner gets the chance to create and launch their own wine brand across the US.
'This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for a dedicated wine enthusiast to become a winemaker, own their own wine label and have their wines distributed nationwide,' said series producer Kevin Whelan.
'The competition will be formidable, but the prize will truly be a wine lover's dream come true.'
Programme maker Doc City Productions is already casting for the second series of 'The Winemakers', to be filmed in September in France's Rhône Valley.
The final casting session was held in New York yesterday (10 August) to find 15 new contestants. A 16th place on the new series is reserved for the person creating the 'most innovative and talked-about' online social networking campaign.
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Call me fusty, a Luddite, a party-pooper, but I find this project unspeakably vulgar and a disservice to the historic dignity of wine as a cultural treasure and slow food. Whatever the ballyhoo accompanying the broadcasts, I will not watch “The Winemakers,” as, believe it or not, to this date I have not watched any so-called reality show. The reason is that reality, as it conventionally understood to unfold, is not in the least present. What's onscreen is counterfeit.
People behaving in a stage-managed production in front of cameras cannot and do not behave as they do in reality. They can never escape awareness, at some level, that they are being watched and recorded, and this knowledge shapes their inner and thus observable behavior. Put these same people on the everyday stage of life and they are what they are, not what implicitly or explicitly they are coached to be.
In the modern world, winemaking --- nay, winegrowing, a word that more nearly characterizes the profound continuum --- has unfolded gradually in a natural environment. Wine entails science and artistry, and commercially it be or may not be rewarded.
In the truly Orwellian “Big Brother” world, a wine brand will be “built” in an artificial environment by cunningly manipulated stagecraft. No doubt a gullible public, thirsty for escapism, will rush to buy bottles (which could carry a label like Château Canard, to provide a French spin), and earnest debates about ratings will preoccupy the blogosphere.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Pasa Robles, on the carefully tended slopes of Sonoma, in classrooms and laboratories at the University of California at Davis and at Fresno State (and at Harvard Business School) serious people invest years learning how to try to develop a successful brand. These years involve heavy costs, sacrifice, thought, preparation, expertise, and no glitz whatever.
The series producer, Kevin Whelan, calls the prize “a wine lover's dream come true.” No, it is not a true wine lover's dream; it is a nightmare. It will be yet another example of an old virus in America's value system that, in its latest twist, I would call SarahPalin-1. At bottom, the contribution of “The Winemakers” to wine discourse will amount to nothing more than a wink and a “you betcha.” Given our penchant for the second-rate, I won't be surprised if the winner makes a bundle.
Perhaps Mr. Whelan's next project will be called “The Doctors.” You, too, can become a Park Avenue neurologist, in just six installments.
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