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There is an entertaining scene in Kingsman: The Secret Service where the gentleman spy Harry Hart has dinner with Valentine, the villain. Valentine surprises him by serving a dinner that is McDonalds takeout food.

Valentine offers wine with the McDonalds food, and I don't know anything about wine so I'm wondering what the wine choice added to the conversation.

If you accept the premise of pairing wine with take-out hamburgers, did the wine choice make sense? Was the joke that the wine was particularly good and expensive? Alternatively, was the joke that the wine was a bad choice, showing Valentine doesn't know how to choose wines?

I think that scene shows that Valentine just likes to do whatever he wants, and since he likes McDonalds, he'll serve that. Harry Hart, meanwhile, shows splendid aplomb; he doesn't bat an eye at the odd dinner, and doesn't hesitate to ask for a Big Mac.

Harry Hart suggests that for dessert they could have (if I recall correctly) cotton candy plus another wine. Again, I'm wondering what the wine choice would imply. Was it a "dry" wine that would pair well with a sweet dessert? Again, was the wine expensive/a good choice, or a hilariously inappropriate choice meant as a troll?

P.S. At the very beginning of the movie there is much to-do about some amazing whiskey. I'm wondering if that was a real whiskey that really is amazing or if they just made something up as a joke.

If I were making a movie, since I don't know anything about wine really all the wine names would be jokes. Like, with dinner they would have had the '59 Pinot Grand Fenwick.

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  • It sounds like you're actually more interested in the quality of the wine, which isn't something we specialize in here... While there isn't a wine SE, the lovely people over at Seasoned Advice will answer questions about spirits. Odd that there are two SE sites for beer but none for wine!
    – Catija
    Mar 27, 2015 at 5:59
  • Not at all! I don't know wine and I don't care much about wine. I care about whether there were extra jokes in there that I missed. It's one joke if the wine is crazy expensive, a different joke if Valentine chose something really inappropriate, and another joke if they made something up. Was Harry Hart trolling Valentine, or was he showing his amazing knowledge of wine to suggest something awesome, or what? I want to know what was going on. I say again, I don't care about the wine as wine.
    – steveha
    Mar 27, 2015 at 6:04

2 Answers 2

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The wine offered, if memory serves, was Chateau Yqem. This is famously one of the most expensive wines in the world. A bottle would set you back several hundred pounds.

As you suggest, the joke is in the juxtaposition of the meal with a wine of that price.

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The wines offered were a 1945 chateau lefite rothschild. This is a wine made from Syrah in the pauillac region of france. It probably would not be a good pairing for such a light meal. The Chateau D'yquem is a sweet wine and would go nicely with the twinkies as Galahad suggests.

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