The Tasting Room
When an urbane couple visits his tasting room for a flight, a hapless attendant
struggles to make heads or tails of their poetic, pretentious and scathing wine tasting notes.
If you enjoy wine and quirky comedies, you've probably seen the movie Sideways, starring Paul Giamatti as a curmudgeonly author, who also fancies himself a wine connoisseur. Many of the film's funnier passages of dialog involve his character Miles Raymond musing on the taste and aroma of various wines.
MILES
A little citrus. Maybe some strawberry. Mmm.
Passion fruit, mmm, and, oh, there's just like the
faintest soupçon of like, uh, asparagus, and, there's a,
just a flutter of, like a, like a nutty Edam cheese.
Now, if you thought he was a rather pretentious prig, then you've yet to meet Ian and Cassandra, the pompous ‘life-partners’ at the center of the charming short screenplay, The Tasting Room by Steve Cleary.
Together, they make Miles of Sideways seem like rather intellectually reasonable and emotionally well-adjusted member of society. Same can't be said of Cassandra and Ian, as they embark on a metaphor infused wine tasting session at what is presumably a winery of some sort.
From the get-go, it's clear that they're not exactly from around here...
ATTENDANT
Come in from out of town?
IAN
We're denizens of the city.
CASSANDRA
Yes, the city.
ATTENDANT
Oh yeah? Los Angeles? San Francisco?
IAN
Oxnard.
Subjected to ministering to this courtly couple is perhaps the real hero of our story; the tasting room Attendant. A more warm, knowledgeable, and accommodating sommelier you're unlikely to find.
Regardless of the gibbering eloquence and verbose vexation of his guests, the Attendant remains steadfast in his trusty role as a discerning taste guide...
ATTENDANT
This is from last year's harvest, with notes
of grapefruit, gooseberry, and fresh-cut grass.
Enjoy.
Despite his best efforts to match a wine to the palette of his guests, the Attendant continuously comes up short, as Ian and Cassandra seem to become increasingly irritated as they evaluate the taste of each glass presented to them.
IAN
Ahh, a sultry sprite swirling on a slipper flower.
Cassandra throws him a dirty look and calmly spits the wine into the pour bucket.
CASSANDRA
Meh. A turgid troll twerking on a twig.
As they progress through each tasting, our pouty partners up the ante of their metaphorical descriptions... clearly using their musings as a piquant proxy to air out a variety of grievances, in a way that only the most waspish of society would likely understand.
When all is said and done, will the Attendant finally uncork his patience and show Ian and Cassandra the door? Or will the 'life partners' finally find a complimentary taste to overcome their bottled-up bitterness, and in doing so, rediscover the flavor of love?
In a similar vernacular used by wine mavens all over the world, this is a darkly amusing script that is, short but deep. Simple yet complex. Bitter yet flowery. So, curl up on the couch, pour yourself a merlot, or a chardonnay, or a zinfandel and then quench your creative thirst with this wonderfully eclectic script that is ideal for the auteur craving to produce something quirky, droll, and dialog-driven.
