'The Sideways Effect:' How A Wine-Obsessed Film Reshaped The Industry
The 2004 movie about an obsessive wine snob helped boost California's pinot noir production by 170 percent.
Thin-skinned. Temperamental. In need of constant care and attention.
In the film Sideways, which earned an Academy Award in 2005 for Best Adapted Screenplay and boosted the careers of Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh, those descriptive words aptly captured the character of angst-ridden, wine-obsessed protagonist Miles Raymond, played with self-flagellating glee by Paul Giamatti.
The same words also tell the story of an equally important, but liquid, character in the film: pinot noir. A dozen years later, pinot noir has become a mainstay of the California
