The Alcántaras and the Lannisters, a red wine away

Throughout the eight chapters they drink Riesling, Chablis, Sherry, Burgundy, Sauternes, Champagne and even a Sonoma red to accompany some of the dishes with which Julia Child conquered millions of American homes since the 1960s. all the series in which wine is present, and there are many, is one of the few that introduces it into the plot with the sole excuse that its protagonists enjoy it and give it the same importance as crêpes suzette.

Grapes at nap time

The vineyard was just an excuse for the characters to argue, go to bed, insult each other and pull their hair out, because Falcon Crest he had chain frights, but few frights had to do with viticulture. His nine seasons of gunshots, fires, explosions, plane crashes and even earthquakes not only served to make Lorenzo Lamas look like palmetto on horseback pretending he came from the vineyards. Also so that really flashy stars paraded there, such as Mel Ferrer, Lana Turner, Rod Taylor, Kim Novak or Gina Lollobrigida, as well as a Jane Wyman who, at least in Spain, became better known for her Angela Channing than for her earlier film career and her marriage to Ronald Reagan. For the Spanish public, who in the 1980s got used to drinking coffee with the header composed by Bill Conti, it was also the discovery of grape varieties not so well known to ordinary consumers, who began to think that ordering a Cabernet Sauvignon was the best of the best and even better than the varieties that were traditionally grown in Spain.

Tuscany Valley was actually Napa Valley in California, but the Channings and Giobertis bear little resemblance to the Kings, the protagonists of Kings of Napa (HBO), an attempt to Falcon Crest updated in which there are also infidelities, blackmail and an attempt to make a dessert wine in… half a year, really? The North American chain ABC has also premiered this year promised land, with the Sonoma Valley as the setting and a Latino family that owns a winery as the protagonist. In Spain there have also been attempts to combine vineyards and family affairs, such as Grand Reserve. And to the Alcántaras, in Tell me how it happened, the winery has given them more trouble than joy.

Wine is more of them

One of the best “It’s Wine O’Clock” of TV is marked by Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) in The Good Wife, in a scene where he stares at his kitchen clock—and the viewer doesn’t know why—until six o’clock strikes, and then yes, he proceeds to open a bottle. The lawyer often drinks wine, but she’s not the only main character in a series to do so. In fact, there are quite a few, and wine seems to be a female affair: Olivia Pope’s (Kerry Washington) favorite menu at scandal It is made up of a glass of red wine and some popcorn; spy Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) doesn’t care about red or white in Homeland and in Game of Thrones, Cersei Lannister (Lena Heady) drowns out the bitterness by asking for more wine to be poured into her glass. Elegant Rose Weissman (Marin Hinke) can’t live without her little bottle of sherry in The wonderful Mrs. Maisel.

The sergeant who plays Mónica López in rape always has on his table a bottle of, we assume, Galician wine. The protagonists of The Bold Type their sorrows are counted while they open a target and in Big Little Lies, Madeline Mackenzie (Reese Witherspoon) often has wine ready in her wonderful open kitchen overlooking Monterey Bay. Another thing is the British aristocrats—and their butlers—in the Julian Fellows series, who seem to have a particular fondness for burgundy (Margaux can always be trusted, says Mr. Carson in downton abbey) and Sherry. And if a servant gets out of jail after being accused—wrongly, of course—of a crime, they bring out their stashed bottles of La Veuve Clicquot, for celebrating with champagne, properly.

Cheap and expensive wines

If a man sneaks (twice) into Buckingham Palace and, on his first foray, swipes a bottle of wine and takes half of it, one imagines an exclusive bottle but no: in crown, Michael Fagan grabs a Vache Johannisberg Riesling, priced at £6, Elizabeth II’s secretary later reports to the monarch. The anecdote may have undergone some modification in its television adaptation, but apparently it does have similarities with what actually happened with Fagan and a bottle of white wine.

What does seem expensive, and in fact leads to several funny and awkward moments of the brand Succession, It is the wedding wine with which the first season of this series ends. Is he macguffin throughout the episode, which perfectly draws the line between classes: those who know what the wine cost and need to say so, and the Roys, whose way of showing off is precisely not to show off at all. Certain wines can also mean status and power and, perhaps for this reason, among the symbols that appear at the head of The Good Fight there’s a bottle of what looks like a very expensive burgundy. And all these objects explode, in an obvious statement of intent.