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Sideways - A Wine Writer’s Perspective
by Bob Hosmon, wine columnist for Florida’s Sun-Sentinel

[The best way to enjoy this movie is with a glass or two of a good Pinot Noir. You’ll thank me for the suggestion!]

In 30 years of writing about wine, I’ve never been happy with the way movies and television treat the subject. Old movies, with elegantly dressed characters drinking 40-year old champagne, are a joke. (Bubbly that old is way past its prime.) Red wine consumed on television looks so watery it might as well be diluted fruit juice (and probably is). Even Frasier’s Niles Crane, a self-professed wine connoisseur, never properly pronounces Montrachet, his favorite - and expensive - white Burgundy. (It’s mon-rah-shay, Niles, not mon-troh-shay). But then along comes a wine-filled movie like Sideways about two friends who take off for a trip to the Santa Barbara wine country, and a whole new world of wine opens up on the big screen.

Miles (Paul Giamatti) is occasionally reminiscent of Niles; note the one-letter difference in their names. He may be a failed writer teaching junior high school English, but he can drop a French phrase and spout pedantic wine comments with the best of them. Miles isn’t just a serious wine lover; he's too often a bonafide pretentious oenophile. Yes, there are those like Miles in the wine industry. Indeed, some make their living acting like Miles (there's one in the film).

When Miles is on his way to a dinner with Jack, he protests that he will not go “if Merlot is being served.” That gets a laugh from the audience, a clear indication of how low the reputation of Merlot has come, mainly because there are so many insipid Merlots out there. But the same remark ignores some truly great Merlots. No Duckhorn, Miles? No Petrus?

Like the most tedious wine pundits, Miles is so wrapped up in what he has to say that he doesn't realize that most people don't care about or even understand what he’s saying. Miles’ description of a wine as showing nuances of “strawberries, passion fruit, and asparagus, with just a fleeting whiff of Edam cheese” is pretty incomprehensible, not to mention unappetizing.

But Miles isn’t always pedantic. Only when he’s unhappy does he laboriously instructs his friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church) on the effects of weather on grapes and the importance of color or uses phrases like “secondary malo-lactic fermentation” (only winemakers care about it). Finally, Jack gets impatient with Miles’ never-ending monologue about a wine they’re about to taste and cuts him off with an apt, “When do we get to drink it?” Way to go, Jack.

When Miles is happy, he’s more real about wine, more likable as a human being. On a visit with Jack to where he once had a romantic picnic with his ex-wife, he confesses to sharing a 1995 Opus One with smoked salmon and artichokes, "We didn't care," he says, indirectly acknowledging the pairing of wine and food as highly unusual, but a great experience nevertheless. That’s how it should be. If you want Chardonnay with steak or Cabernet Sauvignon with tuna, then do it. Don’t worry about what the “experts” say.

Miles is most tolerable when he’s with Maya (Virginia Madsen), satisfied with calling a wine “very nice” and leaving it at that or offering a funny, but perfectly understandable description of an awful wine: “It tasted like the back of an L.A. bus.” When Maya, who’s quite knowledgeable about wine herself, learns that Miles has a rare 1961 Cheval Blanc Bordeaux he’s been saving for a special occasion, she urges him to be impulsive, advising him that, after all, “the day you open a ‘61 Cheval Blanc, that’s a special occasion.”

Toward the end of the movie, Miles is in a fast food restaurant eating a burger and drinking his treasured Cheval Blanc from a paper cup. Is it a sign? Will Miles change, find happiness with Maya, and use his wine knowledge for pleasure, not pedantry? Well, he’s made a good start. He’s turned a very ordinary incident into a very special occasion. And so should we all.

E-Mail: beekman@conversent.net