John Beck - Harvest Blog #2

An update from John Beck, currently touring his film Harvest:

(photo of me outside Movie Tavern)

We had an amazing screening in Suwanee last night. I think the Q&A lasted at least as long at the film.

Big thanks to Toni Shrewsbury and the gang with the City of Suwanee and the staff at the Movie Tavern for such warm hospitality.
(Did I mention you can order Kobe beef sliders and martinis by pushing a button on your seat at this theater?)

We had a great discussion about immigration and worker's rights and I even gave a few bottles of 2011 Foppiano sauvignon blanc (that's harvested in the film) to those who correctly answered trivia questions. One was a pregnant woman who promised not to uncork the bottle until after she gave birth.

My hat's off Adam Edge - the only person to ever notice that the grape grower in the film (Wayne Rogers) who loses 80 percent of his grapes to wild hogs - is sitting at a bar with a stuffed hog above his head in his final scene in the film. As a tribute to Adam, I stopped off at the Good Hope General Store and snapped this photo:

For Adam

I also took photos of cotton fields and thought about how in many ways cotton and grapes are similar - just as cotton was once king in this region, grapes are the dominant monoculture in Sonoma and Napa counties in Northern California.

When I rolled into Madison, the hotel clerk said, "It's a lot like Mayberry." The small town I live in - Benicia, in the San Francisco Bay Area - I like to call it "Mayberry by the Bay," so I feel right at home.

I'm looking forward to the screening at the Madison Morgan Cultural Center tonight. Come on out, I'd love to meet you. They're doing a tasting of Sonoma County wines afterward (6 reds and 6 whites) and local cheeses.