A Taste Of Death 1968

[Mirtha Hinrichs]

Icelebrated 40 years of Sassicaia in the marketplace last night with a small group of wine merchants and wine lovers at Cibreo restaurant in Florence. Owner Niccolo Incisa della Rocchetta and his stepson Sebastiano Rosa brought every vintage ever commercially made at their Tuscan wine estate of Tenuta San Guido for the 14 of us to taste last night. It started with 2005 and ended with 1968.

But Sassicaia is such a loveable wine. It is a wine that has soul. It's one of those iconic wines that make you want to own and to drink them. The Cabernet Sauvignon-based red helped make Tuscany famous by convincing serious wine consumers around the world with its wonderful quality, elegance, and finesse. It is viewed in the same light as legendary Bordeaux growths, as well as top wines from Burgundy, California and just about anywhere else in the world.

Interestingly, it was Niccolo's, cousin vintner Piero Antinori, who originally convinced him to sell Sassicaia in the marketplace. Before 1968, it was just something they made on their estate on the Tuscan coastline to drink with friends and family. Niccolo's father was a big fan of Bordeaux and wanted to make something like that at Tenuta San Guido.

It's also sort of funny how it's seldom the best wine of Tuscany in a given vintage, especially now with all the new wines and wineries out the area. But it is nearly always in the upper echelon. And it has a great pedigree, as the tasting proved.

The wine of the tasting was the 1985. I gave it 100 points, non-blind. This is "the" legendary Sassicaia. It is arguably the greatest wine ever produced in Italy, or at least in Tuscany. The first bottle of the 1985 we opened was corked! I wanted to cry, but Sebastiano had another bottle in his car. And it was sublime. It showed amazing aromas of currants, blackberries, black cherries, and licorice with mint and spices. It was so aromatic and enticing. It put me in a trance to smell it. The palate was full-bodied, silky and caressing with layers of fruit and ripe tannins intertwined. There was so much sweetness and love in this wine. It reminded me of the amazing 1959 Latour.

Other people were blown away by the 1990 and 1975, which were bold and firmly structured with beautiful perfumes. And I thoroughly enjoyed the 1968, which showed this amazing nose of lots of berry and spices. It was very balanced and fruity with lovely silky tannins and a long fruity, cedary aftertaste. It was hard to believe that the 1968 was hardly anything more than a homemade wine when the Antinoris bottled and sold it as a sideline. But most great wines with a pedigree have humble beginnings.

There were so many wonderful wines in the tasting, so I will give you complete notes on Monday. It was amazing how there was not a bad wine in the bunch. I can't think of a wine producer in Italy who could lay on four decades of every wine they bottled, and all the wines would be good to classic quality. That is something very special. That is something very drinkable. And it's why I love drinking Sassicaia.

Throughout October, N. and I will be presenting our 2nd Annual Halloween Movie Marathon, watching as many horror classics as we can fit in between now and All Saint's Day. As always, spoilers abound, so if you're the other person who has never seen Night of the Living Dead, proceed with caution.

When I proudly announced to my girlfriend that I had just about settled on the line-up for this year's October horrorfest, N. met the news with her usual combination of curiosity, excitement, and unbridled enthusiasm.

This, I remind her, is not strictly true: she more than tolerated The Exorcist, and she actually enjoyed The Thing. (Other entries were, admittedly, less successful. My girlfriend's documented fear of clowns was not enough to have made Stephen King's It worth the three hours we spent on it, and N. had some serious issues with the ending of Freaks, in which a woman is transformed into a Chicken Lady.) But none of this, she insists, is the point.

She: The point is, I didn't really enjoy that whole experience. I don't enjoy being scared, and I hate getting images in my head that I then can't get rid off. I hate scary movies. It's my least favorite genre.

She: [Pause] Except for musicals. But after musicals, scary movies would be my least favorite. If you could find a way to combine a scary movie with a musical, that would probably break me.

What We Watched: Night of the Living Dead (1968), directed by George A. Romero, written by Romero and John A. Russo. Starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, Bill Cardille, Kyra Schon, and a lot of undead extras.

He is a dick: he reminds Barbra how he used to tease her because she was afraid of the cemetery, and he begins to scare her again now. "They're coming to get you, Barbra," he sing-songs. He points to a man shambling on the other side of the graveyard. "Look, here comes one now."

Barbra is seriously losing her shit at this point. While that reaction is a refreshingly realistic one for a horror movie character, it does not make her protagonist material, so thankfully our leading man arrives in the form of Ben, a man who has shown up at the house in hopes of getting some gas out of the locked pump out back. Ben is level-headed, resourceful, and able to kick a little zombie ass.

Ben and Barbra share their zombie-survival stories in a couple of overwrought monologues, and this sharing of feelings turns out to be a mistake: Barbra shifts gears from catatonic to hysterical, and decides she has to go look for Johnny. Ben calms her down in the time-honored way of all action movie heroes of the age: by socking her across the jaw, after which she passes out in shock.

The most important factor I notice is that, in nearly every case, zombies are simply an environmental, background threat: the real danger comes from living people being assholes. Zombie movies are disaster movies, not monster movies: it's the power struggles and poor decisions of humans under pressure that constitute the greatest threat. This is a dynamic that can be traced all the way down to The Walking Dead, but the template was formed with Night of the Living Dead.

The social cooker is turned up when Ben and Barbra discover that there are five people hiding in the basement of the house: a middle-aged husband and wife named Harry and Helen (Hardman and Eastman), their injured daughter Karen (Schon), and a young couple named Tom and Judy (Wayne and Ridley).

The first half of Night of the Living Dead could be a particularly dark episode of The Twilight Zone: there are a few gruesome moments (like Tom using a kitchen knife to slice off the fingers of a zombie sticking its hands through the window), and a few R-rated aspects (like the naked female zombie who wanders through the frame occasionally), but for the most part it's not noticeably more explicit than other horror movies of the time.

This changes, however, in the second half, around the time Ben, Tom, and Judy decide to make a break for the gas pump. The plan goes seriously awry: surrounded by swarming zombies, they accidentally set the gas on fire, and set the truck on fire as Tom and Judy try to drive it away. The truck explodes into flames, killing Tom and Judy, and providing the undead with their first taste of cooked meat. The scenes of zombies chowing down on the leg bones, internal organs, and intestines of Tom and Judy are gruesome even by today's standards.

It becomes harder and harder to believe that Romero and his crew were not conscious of the racial subtext when the survivors see a television report about a posse of cops and volunteer rednecks (exclusively white) with torches, guns, and german shepherds, who are roaming the county hunting zombies.

When the next wave of zombies attacks the house, Harry makes his move, and grabs the gun from Ben. But Ben smacks him with a handy piece of lumber, gets the gun back, and coldly shoots Harry in the gut. Harry staggers down into the basement, once again demonstrating the absence of stunt men on this movie.

Since I haven't said much about the craft here, let me pause here for a word of appreciation for Mr. Romero. Working on a shoestring budget, and with a more or less total lack of special effects beyond makeup, Romero stages some very effective scares and thrills using nothing more than dynamic camera movements and the stark contrast of light and shadows. Despite its rough edges, Night of the Living Dead is a masterclass in independent filmmaking.

Zombie films are my favorite BECAUSE the monsters are us and the stories are essentially about our survival as species. The best ones make you ask questions about yourself. Who would I become if the chips were down? Who would I trust? What am I REALLY capable of? Would I be civilized? Barbaric? Feudal? Would I smother a baby to hide a village? Good Zombie films explore these human themes, and mine them to truly horrifying effects.

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