{"id":771,"date":"2017-10-30T21:56:12","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T21:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=771"},"modified":"2017-11-01T20:02:46","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T20:02:46","slug":"dealing-with-sideways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=771","title":{"rendered":"Dealing with “Sideways”"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you love going wine tasting, as we quite obviously do, and if you enjoy telling friends about it, you will inevitably be asked whether you have seen the movie Sideways<\/em>.\u00a0 Well, yes we have and we liked it quite a bit.\u00a0 But since the movie may be all your friends know about a wine tasting trip, you owe it to them to point out what is and is not realistic about it.<\/p>\n

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First, the film gives you the idea that people who visit Wine Country for tasting are jerks and geeks.\u00a0 (We deny being either.)\u00a0 In our experience, the jerks are most often people who want to drink rather than taste and have often been previously overserved.\u00a0 Most wineries are pretty good at dealing with this sort, for their own protection and to preserve the positive experience of other visitors.\u00a0 As for geeks, these are often normal people who are enthusiastic about one topic \u2013 wine tasting, in this instance \u2013 and are eager to share it.\u00a0 As long as they aren\u2019t intimidating wine snobs, they are usually nice to deal with.<\/p>\n

Often, people will tell you that they really liked what they saw of Napa Valley in the movie.\u00a0 However, the wineries and other locations shown in Sideways<\/em> are from the Central Coast, in and around the town of Los Olivos.\u00a0 This is a wonderful sector of Wine Country, with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grown to the west and Syrah to the east.\u00a0 There are some excellent wineries in the movie such as Fess Parker, Foxen and Firestone, well worth visiting.\u00a0 But they are hardly representative of California wine tasting as a whole.\u00a0 In particular, the town of Los Olivos is unique.\u00a0 It\u2019s a quiet little California village that just happens to have an exceptionally high concentration of tasting rooms along its Grand Avenue.\u00a0 This is an opportunity for some interesting wine tasting, but this kind of atmosphere usually is found in urban settings, not a small town like Los Olivos.<\/p>\n

What we find most evocative in the movie is the passion for wine experienced by its protagonists (well, some of them).\u00a0 The scene in which Paul Giamatti and Virginia Madsen explain what wine means to them is eloquent and affecting.\u00a0 Of course, you would be eloquent and affecting too if you had script writers.\u00a0 All the same, there is a spirit of seeing beautiful scenery, trying fine and not so fine wines and eating Wine Country meals that comes through in Sideways. <\/em>\u00a0That spirit is instantly recognizable to those of us who go wine tasting often.<\/p>\n

There is much in the movie that evokes the real experience of wine tasting, despite the characters\u2019 love lives and other shenanigans.\u00a0 Probably the worst thing in the movie is what it did to Merlot production in California.\u00a0 The fellow who keeps crying \u201cNo more Merlot\u201d is a Pinot Noir lover, fair enough, but he doesn\u2019t really know what merlot tastes like, as shown by the St. Emilion he drinks at McDonalds.\u00a0 That\u2019s right, it\u2019s made primarily from Merlot grapes.<\/p>\n

So when Sideways<\/em> comes up in conversation \u2013 and even thirteen years on from its debut, it will \u2013 tell your friends that it\u2019s a fun movie and that some of it actually reflects your own experiences in Wine Country.\u00a0 Then suggest that they take a wine tasting trip and experience the real thing for themselves.<\/p>\n

Cheers !<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you love going wine tasting, as we quite obviously do, and if you enjoy telling friends about it, you will inevitably be asked whether you have seen the movie Sideways.\u00a0 Well, yes we have and we liked it quite a bit.\u00a0 But since the movie may be all your friends know about a wine … Continue reading Dealing with “Sideways”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions\/799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}