Overnoy on HBO
Comedy series How To With John Wilson features a bottle by the Jura legend alongside other famed natural wines in Season II's episode "How to Appreciate Wine." But why?
Subversion and discursiveness are hallmarks of documentarian John Wilson’s work, now in its second season on HBO as the acclaimed surrealist comedy series How To With John Wilson. Episodes titled in the manner of mundane YouTube explainer videos (“How To Make Small Talk,” “How To Invest In Real Estate”) instead take viewers on flaneuristic, quasi-philosophical journeys through the quotidian absurdity of contemporary New York (and American) life.
Wilson’s recently-aired wine episode (“How To Appreciate Wine”) is notable for being one of very few that appears to arrive at something like a real conclusion about its subject.
“My determination to understand wine had sent me to tastings all across the country,” says Wilson. “But no matter where I went or what I drank, it still never felt natural to me. Maybe it was a mistake to even try to join this club.”
During the episode, Wilson endures a wine-tasting cruise on the New York Harbor, only to find that its vibe of thoughtless praise and cultish consensus reminds him uncomfortably of an encounter he had with notorious real-life cult Nxivm during his college years. Repelled by the warped, bullshitty nature of wine description (which Wilson, like most consumers, is misled to equate with wine knowledge), he takes comfort in the relative straightforwardness of energy drinks, which more or less taste like what they say on the can. (That his research into a Florida energy drink impresario leads him directly into another cult-like atmosphere at the man’s home is characteristic of the show’s piquant sense of irony.)
Wilson is not aiming at wine, per se. His true target is the fawning consensus surrounding wine, and the routine (if not primary) deployment of wine expertise as a distasteful form of social capital. “I really didn’t want to be a sheep, like everyone else,” he says. “But I also didn’t know how to opt out and ignore wine completely.”
Fair enough. But early in the episode, there appears to be a sort of easter-egg that reveals Wilson to be less indifferent than he claims.
A dejected Wilson arrives at his friends’ dinner party bearing a bottle of bottom-shelf zinfandel, placing it among a group of bottles that seems conspicuously staged. They are: (from what I can discern)
Emmanual Lassaigne’s “Clos Sainte Sophie” Champagne.
The aforementioned bottle from Overnoy-Houillon
Alice Bouvot / Octavin’s Vin de France “Mus’cat”
A bottle by Galician natural wine estate La Perdida.
A bottle by Jura natural vignerons Peggy and Jean-Pascal Buronfosse.
Two brief subsequent shots reveal:
A bottle from Catalan natural wine pioneer Laureano Serres.
A bottle from Styrian natural wine pioneers Sepp and Maria Muster.
It’s possible these rare, cult natural wines - three of which are downright iconic - were all brought by Wilson’s wine-savvy friends by sheer chance to this scene which does not mention natural wine. It’s also possible this was a scene initially intended to illustrate natural wine and the scene got repurposed in the editing process. But it seems likelier Wilson knew what he was doing when he choreographed the scene, using his outwardly wine-skeptical broadcast as a sort of Trojan horse to enact this peculiar HBO debut of Pierre Overnoy et al. Recall the precise wording of his critique of the (conventional) wine tastings he’d attended in researching the show: “But no matter where I went or what I drank, it still never felt natural to me.” (Italics mine.)
He wouldn’t be the only film auteur or recording artist or actor to have fallen for natural wine in recent years. But he would be the only one whose irresistible comedic Everyman persona basically requires him to disavow, or at least feign indifference towards, the subject of wine.
It’s almost a pity, given the obvious - but rather heavy - digressive potential of the subject of natural wine. (Anyone who’s meditated at any length on natural wine quickly confronts issues ranging from agricultural reform to climate change to mass species extinction. Cheers!)
I messaged Wilson on Instagram to see if he felt like revealing any backstory to the scene. He hasn’t responded, which is understandable, given that he is the toast of the US comedy scene and I am the obscure author of a niche newsletter about natural wine.
In the meantime, we may content ourselves with the knowledge that Wilson is, at very least, aware of the notion of natural wine. In the same episode, he goes so far as to define it for his viewers as wine “made with as few steps as possible between harvesting and consumption.”
It’s a definition one might describe as well-intentioned. Like, one hopes, the visual gag that accompanies its narration.
Update - 7:51PM CET
I’ve learned the scene was filmed at the home of Wilson’s friend Whitney Harms of Henry’s Wine & Spirits in Brooklyn. She’s not sure the bottle selection was coordinated to send a specific message about natural wine.
“He asked me to put out some fancy wine and I did,” says Harms. “John does like natural wine though! We live close to Forêt [Wines] so he buys from Marie [Tribouilloy, owner of Forêt Wines] and sometimes from Henry’s, where I’m at.”
There you have it, folks. John Wilson, natural wine guy. One of us!
FURTHER READING
NOT DRINKING POISON Issue 5.5: Volcanic Occitanie
Harvesting “Clos Sainte Sophie” with Manu Lassaigne.
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hit up @itisntmidnight who got the wine for this scene ♡