And the Winner Is: Spoofulation

I watched the Oscars last Sunday with two friends who are costume designers, each with a long list of credits and plenty of first-hand celebrity experiences. Their commentary in some ways reminded me of the ongoing discussion in wine geekdom about natural wines.

Both of my friends have seen more than their share of special effects and not just the kind of computer-animated technology that made a smash hit out of “Avatar.” I’m talking about the nipping, tucking, injecting, dyeing, extending, covering over, smoothing out, and dressing up that hide the flaws that mother nature visits on all of us.

Give the public what they want—it’s a fact of life that Hollywood’s brand of perfection is gobbled up and sought after in massive quantities.

Like the skilled plastic surgeon, makeup artist, or costume designer, some winemakers use tricks and technology—reverse osmosis, oak chips, manufactured yeasts, micro oxygenation, fining, filtration, enzymes, and other additives that intensify color, flavor, aroma, and mouth-feel to create wines with universal appeal that win awards, garner big scores, and are gobbled up by consumers and critics alike.

In the wine biz, some people call these “spoofulated” wines—a term that has morphed a bit over the years but whose etymology can be traced to Harmon Skurnik of the importer Michael Skurnik Wines. He first used the term to describe wines with “too much makeup” in the form of “manipulation which takes wine away from nature and into the technological world of fake extraction, fake aromatics, fake flavors, fake density, fake acidity, fake tannin levels, fake color and fake sugar levels.”

So last Sunday, when the costume design winner was announced, both of my friends rejoiced in seeing a mutual friend take home the award. But they also lamented the fact that it is usually the movies with more pomp and grandeur that grab all the attention in this field. Alas, they said, it’s harder to design costumes that portray a more natural, realistic, even gritty side of life.

Maybe it’s a stretch (or the eternal curse of being a wine geek) to find a connection between show biz and my personal preferences in wine, but like my two friends, I always love to see something a little more down to earth basking in the limelight.

Tags: wine