Wine and a Movie: Sideways

Besides meals, there are other things to "pair" with wine. I came late to the world of wine, so I had never seen the movie Sideways when it first came out. So with a free Friday, we decided to sit down with a movie and a bottle of wine. Of course, in this case the pairing was simple: a Pinot Noir to match the one thing I knew about the movie--the obsession with the red wine.

For me, it was probably good to put off the viewing of this movie until I had a chance to explore wine myself. The story focuses on the horrible stereotypes of wine drinkers. Pretentious, and disdainful of those who don't share his views, Miles  epitomizes the exact opposite of everything we enjoy about wine. But thankfully, the story never asks us to try to like our male characters, fully embracing and acknowledging we are watching bad men drinking wine.

One scene came close to what our ideal of sharing a bottle of wine, as Maya uses the language of wine as a metaphor to share details of herself with Miles, but even here our "hero" fails to embrace the true joy of sharing with someone.

In theory, we should have aimed for a weak, pale Pinot Noir to match the wine swilling heroes of our movie, but that would be taking things a bit  too far. Instead, we kept true to our own wine roots and opened a bottle produced in New York. No pretention here, just a love of the story of wine.