Not only has "Sideways" pushed Pinot Noir into the limelight, revived the careers of Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen, but now, according to today's Wall Street Journal, it looks like it's sparked a new tourism boom in the Santa Ynez Valley - and not necessarily for the wine:
Now "Sideways" is drawing a new crowd to the Santa Barbara wine county, which has long played third fiddle to Napa and Sonoma. And for the moment, the movie is rivaling the attention nearby resident Michael Jackson is getting.
By far the most frequently mimicked moment is one in which Mr. Giamatti's character, an incorrigible wine snob named Miles, declares: "If anyone orders merlot, I'm leaving. I am not drinking any f- merlot." All day long, tourists traipse through local wineries and restaurants featured in the movie, repeating Mr. Giamatti's colorful outburst and casting aspersions on one of the country's most popular varietals.
People repeat the line "every time we pour the merlot," says Kole Knutson, a tasting-room manager at the Kalyra Winery in Santa Ynez, where some scenes in the movie were filmed.
Few places have borne the brunt of this more than the Hitching Post, a restaurant prominently featured in the movie. Cocktail hour at the Hitching Post these days is a mob scene, especially since the movie's Academy Award nominations were announced in late January. Ms. Marcus, a 39-year-old Los Angeles public-radio fund-raiser, recalls how she easily got an 8 o'clock reservation at the restaurant two months ago, only to find a long wait there when she arrived with two girlfriends on a recent Saturday night.
Later the same evening, Julie Iko Caruso jostled into the bar with a group of five friends. "We've been taking turns saying the lines," said Ms. Iko Caruso, as she and her friends in unison repeated the merlot rant. Ms. Iko Caruso had come up for the weekend from Manhattan Beach, in the Los Angeles area, and was sipping a Cosmopolitan rather than the pinot noir that is touted as nearly life-changing in "Sideways." Later in the evening, her husband, Tony, mimicked the feline sexual growl of the movie's womanizing character, Jack, played by Oscar-nominee Thomas Haden Church.
"Our bar used to be a quiet place, and now it's a hangout," says Hitching Post co-owner Frank Ostini, who held court on a recent Saturday night in a Hawaiian shirt dotted with wine bottles. "People call their friends on the East Coast from the bar and say, 'Guess where I am?' "
And, an Associated Press story echoes the turning tides of tourism in the area, additionally pointing out the uber-commercial "Sideways" marketing mania that's rolling out in the area:
The Santa Barbara tourism office published 10,000 Sideways maps for tourists wanting to retrace the adventures of Miles and Jack. Within a month of the film's release, the maps were gone and 30,000 more were printed. The map also has been downloaded 5,000 times from the bureau's website since December...
...Now, some businesses are offering Sideways-themed packages.
Guests at the Wine Valley Inn & Cottages in Solvang, for example, also receive a gift certificate for a meal at a Danish restaurant and a bottle of wine from the Firestone Vineyard, among other items. The restaurant and vineyard are two places Miles and Jack visit.
Hmm...I actually might be visiting San Francisco in the next few months on business. I wonder if all of this means that there will be no tourists in Napa and Sonoma.
More wine for me! And, frankly, I'm inclined to slurp on Zinfandel, rather than Merlot or Pinot Noir anyway.
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