Das Land der tausend Weine (Rioja, Land of the Thousand Wines, Rioja, la tierra de los mil vinos)
Spain 2023

Opening 26 Sep 2024

Directed by: José Luis López-Linares
Writing credits: José Luis López-Linares

In Spain, north of the Iberian Peninsula is La Rioja, both a Spanish province and an autonomous community. It is most famous throughout the world for its eponymous wines made with Tempranillo grapes grown in its seven valleys with climates that roll in from the Atlantic down to the Mediterranean. Who better then than Spain’s renowned director-writer-cinematographer José Luis López-Linares could fashion a documentary about this region. Its abundance of detailed facts, historical background, religious influences, and personal anecdotes from a multitude of interviewees who are influenced by Rioja wines stretches across the breath of citizenry and professions.

The region’s three main areas are Rioja Alta, Rioja Baja, and Rioja Oriental and throughout this swath of land, vintners, some tracing their lineage and land back centuries, are so attuned to nature they breath, eat, sleep, and live for wine. By the end of the film, it seems like we have talked to most of them. Plus, a chef and a hotelier, a journalist, a master wine taster, a museum, and a feisty women’s collective, et al. Once they begin talking, each one has a lot to say; oftentimes, editor Pablo B. Guzman breaks the talking head monotony by showing coordinating B-roll material, i.e., the flowing of ubiquitous wines, e.g., into glasses, into vats, etc. Two winemakers, while stomping berries with their feet inside a vat, explain the processes and procedures. From night harvesting into Michelin kitchens or Roman Empire churches the contemporary López-Linares follows wine as only a cultural historian does, and that might account for the heaviness in the documentary. There is so much information, so many winemakers, and so little time to catch one’s breath.

Jorge Magaz’s consummate, commanding score delightfully mimic and flows with the onscreen visuals; production values are good. Wine aficionados will most appreciate the all-encompassing material overflowing from Das Land der tausend Weine. (Marinell Haegelin)