Word: noir
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...wines, it's whiny oenophile Miles' poignant ode to this oft overlooked and finicky varietal that has moviegoers rushing to see what the fuss is about and poring over Sideways: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Press) for wine names and explanations. During the month of December, sales of Pinot Noir increased 15% in one New York City store, but it's in restaurants where the buzz is greatest. At Sona in Los Angeles, sommelier Mark Mendoza says, "The increase is remarkable." And at Las Vegas' Sensi, sales by the glass are up 30% for the 2001 Sokol Blosser Willamette Valley Pinot...
...Landmarc, a chic neighborhood bistro in New York City, wine director David Lombardo can always tell when the most recent showing of Sideways at the nearby movie theater has let out: diners come in asking about Pinot Noir...
...could be more surprised by the sudden surge of Pinot interest than John Winthrop Haeger, author of the recently released--and well-timed--North American Pinot Noir (University of California Press), which details all aspects of the often moody grape and profiles 72 of the best American Pinot Noir producers. He devoted the past five years to exploring a wine that he felt was "a growing niche phenomenon" with a "healthy cult status. I thought Pinot Noir would never be mainstream. It wasn't ever going to be synonymous with red wine." But then came the film...
Usually Hutch finds himself pitted against his bete noir, Dennis Worner, CEO of Worner industries, a multi-national conglomerate. We first see Worner - where else? - presiding over his group of toadying yes-men in a boardroom. He sports a puppet on top of his head as some sort of crazed motivational device. "What is the half-life of your innovation?" he screams, in a perfect parody of corporate newspeak. Hart's musical ear for creating nonsense versions of the aerobicized cynicism of biz language becomes one of the book's biggest pleasures. When Worner later runs into a disguised Hutch...
...disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need someone to tell us that it is O.K. not to be happy, that sadness makes happiness deeper. As the wine-connoisseur movie Sideways tells us, it is the kiss of decay and mortality that makes grape juice into Pinot Noir. We need art to tell us, as religion once did, Memento mori: remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. It's a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh...