As the film lauding the pinot grape, Sideways, celebrates its 20th birthday, the Mail visits the 'hipster' California hotspot where it was set - and finds wine tourism there is in rude health
- Oliver Bennett travels to Santa Ynez Valley, U.S, where Sideways was filmed
- He says it is a 'funkier' alternative to Napa, with wineries run by exiles from LA
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The film Sideways is 20 years old this year, but still as fresh as a chilled glass of Chablis. In it, antiheroes Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church) go on a mid-life break to California's wine country and end up in a psychodrama of bars and hook-ups.
Although the film was associated with San Francisco’s better-known Napa Valley, it was actually set in the funkier Santa Ynez Valley, closer to Los Angeles.
The three-hour climb to Santa Ynez from LA reveals a glorious landscape of rolling hills and sagebrush.
My ears pop as we pass Montecito - near Harry and Meghan's lair - and 3,000ft above LA's smog I turn into The Inn At Mattei's Tavern.
A century ago, canvas-covered wagons parked outside this bar - now it’s all about artisanal food and wine. I warm up with a glass of pinot noir from the local Strange Family Vineyards - pinot was a Sideways favourite.
Oliver Bennett travels to Santa Ynez Valley, in California, where the film Sideways was set 20 years ago
Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church) enjoying a tipple in Sideways
If Napa’s a grande dame then Santa Ynez is a hipster with wineries run by good-life exiles from LA. It now has 170-plus vineyards and farmers' markets in chi-chi villages.
Take Los Olivos, a few hundred yards from Mattei's. It’s here that Miles and Jack went drinking in Sideways and it’s now a town with no fewer than 30 wineries offering every variety.
I recall Miles’s advice on wine - 'Stick your nose in it. Don’t be shy, really get your nose in there' - and get busy. Consider it done.
I look around the area’s other sights. Solvang is a Danish-American curiosity with folksy windmills and candy stores, Los Alamos is like stepping into a Sergio Leone movie and time seems to have stopped in Santa Ynez.
Solvang (above) in Santa Ynez is a 'Danish-American curiosity with folksy windmills and candy stores'
In good taste: The endless vines of the Napa Valley - a grande dame according to Oliver
Oliver visits Inglenook, Napa's most famous winery, founded in 1879 and bought with the profits from The Godfather movie by its wine-lover director Francis Ford Coppola
But Napa beckons, via a short flight to San Francisco.
An hour after touchdown I meet local guide Mike Ward in a white limo - reg plate WINE 82 - who reminds me that two devastating fires, in 2017 and 2020, knocked Napa, well, sideways. But this is California, where problems become opportunities.
Stanly Ranch resort opened two years ago - part-Paltrow, part-Wild West with double-denim bellboys and a meditation cushion in every room. I’m soon necking Pride Mountain merlot and listening to tree frogs croaking.
I head along Napa’s Highway 29 and arrive at Inglenook, the region’s most famous winery, founded in 1879 and bought with the profits from The Godfather movie by its wine-lover director Francis Ford Coppola. Its reputation has ducked and dived over the years, but it’s still a Napa must, and a glass later I am in spa-rich Calistoga, with the holy Napa trinity of mud, water and wine. Both Napa and Santa Ynez are proving that wine tourism is in rude health.
As Dean Martin’s refrain went in Little Ole Wine Drinker Me: 'I’m praying for rain in California. So the grapes can grow and they can make more wine.'
With you there, Deano.
