Zev Robinson’s Film “Dinastia Vivanco: Giving back to wine what wine has given us” Screens Tonight in SF, Friday in Davis

If only I had mastered being in multiple places at the same time…!

But I’ll be here in Ventura doing the #crushit twitter tasting then attending my son’s elementary school talent show (he and five other students are doing Bill Wither’s classic “Lean on Me” with guitar by a parent!)

If I could, I’d be at tonight’s 6:30pm San Francisco film screening of Zev Robinson’s new documentary Dinastia Vivanco: Giving back to wine what wine has given us at the Viz Cinema, to be followed by a wine tasting. And I’ve already seen the film–Zev sent me an advance copy. We were hoping to arrange a screening in Southern California…

If YOU can make it, reserve your spot: http://dinastavivanco.eventbrite.com/

The film traces the Vivanco family’s 100 year history in wine-making, and what each of the four generations contributed to the development of the business, in a unique story as much about vision, persistence and passion as it is about wine.

As a teenager in the early 60’s, Pedro Vivanco started delivering his family’s wine by bicycle, then rose to become a major but anonymous producer for well-known Rioja brands. In the process, and as a result of 40 years of collecting, he and sons Rafael and Santiago have created what many consider the world’s best wine museum, reflecting their passion for wine culture and philosophy of “giving back to wine what wine has given us.”

Canadian-British filmmaker Zev Robinson first visited the Dinastia Vivanco winery and museum in 2009 to film material for his series of documentaries on Spanish wine, and ended up creating an hour long film on the family saga that has played an essential, but little known role in the transformation of Rioja wine.

Founded in 1915 as a small, personal winery, the film traces the contributions of each of the four generations in building the winery. Now run by winemaker Rafael and Santiago Vivanco, the director of the Museum and Foundation, the documentary uses interviews with the family and others conducted during Zev Robinson’s five filming trips to create a narrative interweaving the family’s history with that of the evolution of La Rioja.

Read a blog post about the making of the film. Read more about it and see a preview: http://zevrobinson.com/video/making-the-dinastia-vivanco-documentary/

Tomorrow Friday June 10 at 5pm, Zev will screen the documentary at UC Davis at the Robert Mondavi Institute. Details here http://aic.ucdavis.edu/cwe/dv/ Advance registration required.

Zev is working on a few other wine related projects including one about the Douro, due to be released September 2011. He’s done two previews; this is the second one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SjhATsAiXY

And he’s doing a documentary about Catavino’s Gabriella and Ryan Opaz and the Wine Bloggers Conference. This preview includes an interview with me from last summer in Walla Walla: