(by Claude Auguste / Editorial team / Photo: 20th Century Fox / animated image: Runwayml)
Almost exactly 20 years ago, I was sitting in the cinema, with a cascade of expectations that had nothing to do with wine. A road movie? Two men? Napa Valley? It sounded like summer, sunshine, vineyards, the good life, didn’t it? It also sounded a bit boring. But I was desperate to see the film because Sideways featured a bottle I’d always wanted to drink, hadn’t got round to drinking back then, and only finally tasted in 2011: the 1961 Cheval Blanc – the cult Merlot from the Bordelais. What I was then presented with in *Sideways* was a way of life that stirs up dust rather than sunshine – whilst telling us a surprising amount about wine.
*Sideways* is a 2004 American film by Alexander Payne, released in Europe in February 2005, starring Paul Giamatti as Miles Raymond and Thomas Haden Church as Jack on a week-long trip through the Santa Ynez Valley, California. What looks like a charming wine tour is, in truth, a kaleidoscope of midlife crisis, shattered dreams and two men who never quite believed in themselves, and rarely had faith in themselves, before they lost themselves in the vineyards.
In *Sideways*, wine is more of a backdrop than a central theme – but a perfectly executed one at that. Miles is a wine buff, a taster, an over-educated connoisseur: he wants every sip to make sense, every wine to be a map, a thought. His antics – talking about structure, minerality and flavour, his penchant for Pinot Noir and his occasional verbal jabs at Californian Merlot – are as funny as they are melancholic.
‘If anyone orders Merlot, I’m leaving. I am NOT drinking any f***ing Merlot.’ – that line was uttered, and part of the wine world nodded in agreement. Even though it only appears in a single scene, it gave rise to what became known as the ‘Sideways effect’: Following the US cinema release, Merlot sales dipped slightly, whilst Pinot Noir sales soared. In Sideways, the rivalry between Bordeaux and Burgundy was also played out on US soil.
This was no scientific or oenological power play, but rather a cultural resonance: Pinot became the star of the show, whilst Merlot became the scapegoat of the cinematic paean. In bars, restaurants and on wine shelves, one suddenly sensed that hint of ‘toy boy’ snobbery which began in a road movie and rose to become a collective wine recommendation.
Yet *Sideways* is more than just a catalyst for wine trends. The film illustrates how the cult of wine often has less to do with grapes or soil and more to do with projection, the construction of meaning, and longing. Here, wine is not merely tasted, but brought to life. Pinot Noir is not just a flavour; it is a standpoint, an attitude, a way of being – and Merlot becomes the scapegoat because Miles cannot stand himself.
And then, in the film’s finale, this moment: Miles, in his despair, drinks his one and only cult bottle – the world-famous 1961 Château Cheval Blanc – from a paper cup in a diner. No decadent glass, no candles, no audience. A cult icon torn from its context – and simply wine.
That is the crux of it: wine as a ritual, wine as a fixed point, wine as a constructed escape. Not as a status symbol. Not as a label. But as a point of contact between who we were and who we could be.
*Sideways* is a road movie about men, wine and failed lives. A film about wine that never intended to be about wine at all. And perhaps that is precisely why it remains so relevant to this day – complete with Merlot-bashing, the canonisation of Pinot and the strangely romantic notion that a film can influence the demand for an entire grape variety.
What the film lacked back then – and what stands out even more clearly today – is the absence of women as passionate wine enthusiasts. A curious irony: a film about wine that portrays wine-loving as a male bastion. That may have seemed sentimental 20 years ago – today it comes across as, well, undeniably old-fashioned. And therein lies both its charm and its limitation.
*Sideways* is not an educational film. Not a wine guide. Not a marketing tool. It is a melancholic, funny, quirky meditation on longing and failure – with wine as one of its most beautiful metaphors.
And it also shows just how outdated this perspective – and this film – is.