GORD STIMMELL
As a wine critic, I've always found that individual wines have personality. That personality is due to the grapes, their background, their geographic location, the magic and unique combination of sun, rain, soil and winemakers' prowess in sculpting the grapes into the final wine.
So yes, wines take on human characteristics. But what if humans took on the characteristics of wine? This has already happened in the wine road-trip movie Sideways.
Pinot noir is the passion of Miles (Paul Giamatti), a balding, recently divorced struggling novelist who decides to go with friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church) — who is getting married in a week — for a final freedom fling to the Central Coast, sipping their way through the scenic wineries of California's Santa Barbara County.
Pinot noir hasn't had so much publicity since Marq de Villiers book The Heartbreak Grape. And Miles' obsession has been picked up by the public and translated into a surge in sales for pinot noir. On the other hand, Miles holds considerable disdain for merlot. At one point in the movie, he grabs Jack on the doorstep of a restaurant where they are about to join their dates, and warns: "If anyone orders merlot, I'm leaving. No going to the dark side."
Merlot sales have been in a slight funk for a few years now, so this couldn't be helping.
But the movie has spurred enthusiasm for wine in general. Sideways wine tours have sprung up in Santa Barbara, retracing the duo's vinous voyage. There's even a Sideways wine map on the Internet.
Miles and Jack could not be more contrasting, and each resembles the traits of certain grapes. Miles is the most obvious, because like pinot noir, he sips gingerly from the pool of life, is fussy, shy, hard to love and work with, and has lots of sensitive layers. He is a classic introvert and is as "thin skinned" as the grape he describes.
His unlikely longtime pal Jack is the opposite. Ruggedly handsome part-time actor Jack is simple. He lives by his emotions in the moment, diving directly into the pool of life. He is amazingly like merlot, with its in-your-face flavour, a total extrovert. All Jack wants is the wine to taste good and to sip deeply from it and just to live in the present. Of course the movie's director, Alexander Payne, feels "Jack is more of a cabernet, which can be grown anywhere and survive even when neglected."
How woman-slayer Jack and wine-geeky Miles ever got to be best buds is an enduring mystery.
Together, they make a strange blend. Jack is not content with a seduction of his senses by wine; he wants his life to contain one last grand seduction of a woman before marriage, and tries to drag unwilling Miles deeply into it.
The two women they encounter in their blitzkreig visit to wineries turn out to be pretty complex, yes, like fine wine. The women are both closet wine connoisseurs and not pretentious about it, whereas Miles tends to get into wine so deeply — no doubt to escape the pain of his failed marriage and an unpublishable novel — that he sounds like a snob no matter what he says.
Wine pourer Stephanie (Sandra Oh) is vivacious but has hidden dimensions. At first, when she becomes a passionate partner for Jack, she's a sexy shiraz. Upfront, voluptuous, a fun-loving mate. Then it's a sudden shock that we learn her home wine stash contains a Richebourg, a legendary pinot noir. Soon we realize she is an exotic, with floral dimensions, but is no man's fool, with a fierce spicy core.
In short, she's a special reserve gewürztraminer.
Waitress Maya (Virginia Madsen) is more like a racy white wine. She wakes up the orally retentive Miles on a first double date with a gently seductive Fiddlehead Sauvignon Blanc she shares with him. Maya exudes quiet class, like a premium chardonnay with just the right blend of oak and fruit in perfect harmony. She's that precious balance between elegance and power.
Maya has a wonderful speech to Miles in which she confesses she thinks of wine as "a living thing," how it tastes different each time it is opened and ever continues to evolve. "That is, until it peaks and begins its steady, inevitable decline. And it tastes so f--king good." Miles, as usual, gets the meaning but misses her seductive subtext. It's all too easy to take chardonnay for granted.
Wine is the fifth major character in Sideways. Its vines reach into every crevice of the movie. However, you do not have to be a grape aficionado to identify with the four major characters. There's lots of humanity there to hang affection, or repugnance, upon.
With all the Oscar nominations, Sideways is bound for glory and more audiences, so the pinot noir frenzy will likely not abate for awhile. But as even Miles admits, great pinot noirs are few and far between. For every great red Burgundy, there are dozens of thin, acrid versions at equally expensive prices. And even with more lavishly fruited Oregon and California and New Zealand pinot noirs, one has to be selective.
So which grape are you?
