March 14, 2005
According to California’s Mirassou Winery, the sales of “premium Pinot Noir year to date are up 41% versus a year ago, thanks in part to the Oscar-winning movie ‘Sideways’ [and its] ode to this high maintenance grape. Many California winemakers are thrilled that the movie has finally given Pinot Noir the attention it deserves.”
While I am not sure the movie actually won an Oscar, it was nominated in a number of categories. That sent many people to the theatre to see what the fuss was about.
The cultists, according to one Okanagan winemaker, sneak bottles of Pinot Noir into the movie. This winemaker did but then did not have the nerve to pull the cork – not that Pinot Noir and hot buttered popcorn is a match made in heaven.
Wineries other than Mirassou have confirmed a rising interest in Pinot Noir. If there is a British Columbia Pinot Noir that you favour, I would suggest stocking up when it is available, at least as long as the movie-induced frenzy lasts.
If you don’t have a favourite, let me suggest producers that have good examples. First rank Pinot Noir producers include Blue Mountain, CedarCreek, Quails’ Gate, and Kettle Valley. Coming very close are Venturi-Shulze, Alderlea, Burrowing Owl Vineyards, Inniskillin Okanagan, See Ya Later Ranch and Mission Hill. All of the above are $20 and up (good Pinot Noir is seldom inexpensive).
There also is excellent value Pinot Noir ($12-$16) from Gehringer Brothers, Calona Vineyards, Arrowleaf Cellars, Blasted Church, Nk’Mip Cellars, Mt. Boucherie, Golden Mile, Gray Monk and Tinhorn Creek. No doubt, I have missed a few, since the variety is the second most widely planted red in British Columbia (230 hectares).
The movie, Sideways, is – so I am told – light and cleverly entertaining. I have always been of the view that the book, published in 2004, should be better than the movie. During a recent trip to California, I found a copy in a bookstore in the Napa Valley.
So much for my theories. It is the stupidest book I have read in quite some time. Nothing about the book would have turned me on to Pinot Noir, had I not already been drinking the variety.
For those who have not seen the movie or read Rex Pickett’s book, the plot involves two men in their mid-thirties. Miles is a wine nut who is divorced and decides to take his friend, Jack, on a week-long winery tour, largely in search of great Pinot Noir. Jack is going to marry at the end of the tour and Miles is to be the best man.
They spend the week either drunk (even when driving), throwing up or fornicating. They are an awful pair of pigs to spend 354 pages with.
It would be tolerable if the writing had some redeeming qualities. Pickett writes like a fence (sorry, I’ve been reading him too much).
Here is a line that should be entered in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, whose motto is Wretched Writers Welcome: “I tilted my head skyward. High up, a fighter jet divided the sky in two with a zippered gash that bled white.”
How about this choice paragraph: “The serious-looking waiter set more glistening stemware in front of us. We were refreshed all around with the Comte Armand [Burgundy]. As the wine rose to our lips, we were vertiginously winched up to a more rarefied plateau. It was as if we had just left the harbour and entered the sea …”
Or when Miles decides to go to breakfast: “… I adventured off in the direction of Ellen’s Pancake House for comestible fortification and human contact.”
Or when he watches a bad movie, he comes away with this feeling: “Walking up the aisle before the end credits, I felt like I’d been sucked off by a toothless hooker.”
The wine descriptors are usually as ridiculous. A certain Pinot Noir is “tighter than a nun’s asshole but [shows] decent concentration.”
Or when Jack asks why no one is smelling the cork the waiter has just extracted from a bottle, Miles says “…that’s like sniffing a woman’s butt before you have sex with her.”
The Pinot Noir producers of the world got lucky that someone salvaged a decent screen play from this utterly ludicrous piece of dreck.
By the way, did I tell you I didn’t care for the book?
|
