THE DIRECTOR’S CUT

Steven Soderbergh left vodka for a Bolivian beauty. We followed him to South America to find out why.

Steven Soderbergh scrambles to the roof of a truck, sets up a tripod and begins to shoot. Before him lie undulating rows of grape vines, the leaves glinting gold in the early dawn as a harvest crew begins the day’s labour. It is an improbable scene. We are in the far south of Bolivia, a country not known for wine grapes. And Soderbergh — the groundbreaking director whose credits include 2017’s Logan Lucky — isn’t here to shoot another film. He is simply here to visit the source of singani.

The national spirit of Bolivia, singani is an 80-proof tipple that has a 500-year history, dating back to when the Spanish first settled here. It is made from Muscat of Alexandria grapes, which are incredibly liquid, perfumed, floral and sweet, with almost no tannic bite. And when they are turned into wine and distilled, they become a spirit that tastes uncannily like the grapes themselves.

Soderbergh fell hard for singani while filming his 2008 epic, Che. The spirit was not exported to the US at the time, so after figuring out how to keep himself supplied, he decided to create his own brand. Singani 63 — the number refers to Soderbergh’s birth year — is a premium example of the spirit, made in Tarija by Casa Real, a fourth-generation family distillery that employs cuttingedge techniques and copper stills from Cognac, France.

Set 1,829m up in the Andes, the Tarija valley is perhaps the world’s least touristy wine country. The landscape is alternately lush and lunar, etched with craggy palisades and deep craters that need to be filled before being planted with vines. Soderbergh shares some of his thoughts about singani and other discoveries he’s made in Bolivia and beyond.

Tell us about your first sip of singani.

It was 10 years ago in Madrid, at our start-up party for Che. It was shaping up to be a difficult production and I was very anxious about it. Rodrigo Bellott, our casting director, gave me a bottle as a gift. I spent the next six months drinking it.

Sounds like love at first sip.

It really was one of those encounters that alters your life. Looking back, I’m not surprised that it happened at the end of a day that was very intense and stressful. I needed a happy place on that project. Singani wasn’t exported at the time, so I was intent on Rodrigo figuring out a singani mule train that would go from Bolivia to wherever we were during the production. We had it every night — on the rocks.

Like a ritual.

The assistant editor would prepare that day’s footage, and I’d edit at night with the core camera and editorial team. So it’s kind of like a salon and it was all lubricated by singani.

What do you love about it?

There are three acts of singani. The first is the nose, which isn’t like anything else. The second act is the taste: you get the floral notes and an almost peppery thing when you swallow it, and there’s no burn, which was something new to me.

And the third act?

You’re not supposed to talk about this — you’re not allowed to make a commercial that says it’s very buzzy. But you do feel buzzed and not drunk. There is no diminishment — I’m not slurring, I’m not heading for the end zone. I found the effect of it to be more like a high than a drunk, and that was interesting, too.

Introducing Singani 63 has been like a three-

year bar crawl across the US. You must’ve found some great places.

So many. We went to a really interesting bar in Portland called Bible Club PDX. You get out of the car and you’re in a neighbourhood, houses all around. There’s no sign; you just walk into one of the houses and it’s like you stepped into a portal into another century. Nothing in there — including all of the utensils that the bartenders use — is younger than 1920.

Gwen in Los Angeles was also insane. Every layer of the experience is kind of exceptional — the physical space, the atmosphere, the presentation, how you interact with the people, the menu, the cocktails. In San Francisco, 1760 and Foreign Cinema created incredible drinks. It’s fun to be reminded that creativity takes all kinds of forms. What these people do requires as much experience and imagination as anything that I’ve ever done.

How do you relax?

When it comes to going on vacation, I want to — there’s a term in the film business, Translight. It’s a photograph that’s been blown up to like six metres by 24m and it’s outside the window of the sound stage to make it look like you’re in Paris. So the joke that I have with my wife is that I just want to read somewhere where the Translight is different. And it really does, psychologically, work for me. singani63.com

“There are three acts of singani. The first is the nose, the second is the taste and the third is that it’s very buzzy.”