Five times films and TV shows inspired alcohol trends
15th January, 2018
by
Simon Fearn
Sideways and Merlot
2004’s Sideways centres on two friends hitting the road to sample some Californian wine. In what has to be one of the film’s most classic lines, Paul Giamatti’s unstable vino fanatic Miles Raymond screams “If anyone orders Merlot I’m leaving. I’m not drinking any f*cking Merlot!”
The wisdom of taking an unpleasant fictional character’s rant to heart is questionable, but it’s believed some drinkers started to avoid the grape after seeing the film.
“It was just a joke,” director Alexander Payne told USA Today. “But it sort of became the equivalent of 1934’s It Happened One Night, when Clark Gable removed his shirt to reveal no undershirt. Reportedly sales of undershirts plummeted.”
The film’s impact on Merlot was actually relatively muted, with the wine already in steady decline before the film was released. Its greater impact was on Pinot Noir sales after Miles waxes lyrical about the grape.
“Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot’s potential can then coax it to its fullest expression,” Miles says in the film. “Then, I mean, oh its flavours, they’re just the most haunting and brilliant and subtle and ancient thing on the planet.”
As a result Pinot sales rocketed by 16% in the months after the film.
The ultimate irony of Miles’s outburst of course is that his most treasured, ‘unicorn’, wine, a 1961 Château Cheval Blanc, is largely composed of Merlot (and Cabernet Franc).