I Got Sideways
In which Pam and I re-trace the sodden path of Miles and Jack, the protagonists in the classic wine country buddy film Sideways. Trigger alert: Drinking occurs
It's been 20 years since Paul Giamatti waxed poetic about Pinot Noir in the Academy Award-winning wine country romp Sideways. I proposed a story to Fodor's: What's changed, and what's stayed the same, in the Santa Ynez Valley of Santa Barbara County, California, the turf they tore up, in the intervening years? They said can you do it by next month? Pam and I hopped on a plane to L.A., rented a car, and headed north.
The long version of the story follows. The version published in Fodor's was heartlessly amputated shrewdly tailored by a skilled editor, so it doesn't include numerous side adventures and a poignant reference to a “nun’s asshole.” (Another perfectly justifiable edit. But they did let an f-bomb stand, oddly.) Cheers!
Still Getting Sideways
Twenty years after the release of the classic wine country road trip movie Sideways, a lot has changed along America’s most famous cinematic drinking route. Look hard enough, and you can even find some f’ing Merlot.
I was at the Fess Parker Winery in Los Olivos, California, and I had the urge to drink from a spit bucket.
I was just hoping to pay tribute to Miles and Jack, the protagonists in the classic 2004 wine country road trip film Sideways.
In a climactic scene, Miles, played by Paul Giamatti, has just learned that his novel won't be published. Thwarted when a wine pourer in the tasting room of Fess Parker (disguised in the film under the name Frass Canyon) refuses to over-serve him, he grabs the spit bucket and chugs from it, pouring the whole thing down the front of his shirt.
But I didn't see any such vessel, which is probably a good thing. And that wasn't the only difference between the Fess Parker Winery of 2024 and the 2004 version.
The tasting room, depicted as an overwrought, hectic tourist trap 20 years ago, has been transformed into a generous, elegant space made of dark stone and burnished wood; a floating staircase bisects the area. Most of the tastings take place on a gracious patio beneath gently sinuous fabric canopies.
Jack and Miles wouldn't recognize the place.
After Sideways was nominated for five Academy Awards and won one, waves of travelers swept across Santa Ynez Valley wine country, located about two hours north of Los Angeles, many determined to follow the footsteps of Miles and Jack. Twenty years later they still do, and not long ago my wife Pam and I joined them. Our mission: To find out what's changed, and what's stayed the same, along America's most famous cinematic wine tour.
Tilting at the Sideways Inn
One place that neatly straddles the gap between same and different over the 20 years is the Sideways Inn in Buellton. It’s a shrewd rebranding of the gloriously dumpy Windmill Inn depicted in the film -- a two-story, three-star roadside motel that’s tucked between a Shell station, an RV park, and a Highway 101 on-ramp. A faux windmill still looms over the lobby entrance.
But the place has been renewed from the studs up. The modest rooms now feature walk-in showers, updated furniture, and comfortable beds. Our room had a wet bar.
If you want to come close to the true Sideways experience, though, book room 234, where the interior scenes were filmed. In the parking lot just below that room’s balcony, Jack (Thomas Haden Church) is walloped with a motorcycle helmet by his temporary paramour Stephanie (Sandra Oh). It’s payback for not telling her that he’s on his bachelor trip, due to get married in a few days.
Getting Hitched
As Pam and I discovered, you can still walk from the motel along Route 246, as Jack and Miles did both sober and sideways, getting buzzed by traffic and passing the iconic Chevy and Ford dealerships whose signs illuminate the way in the film.
Within about half a mile you reach The Hitching Post 2, the restaurant where movie viewers first lay eyes on the luminous Maya, played by Virginia Madsen.
“I was working the grill, and they wanted the flames to come up behind Maya when she first says hello to Miles,” says Frank Ostini, Jr., owner of the restaurant then and now. “They must have done eleven takes. I had to keep running my hands under water, they were getting so burned.”
Like the proprietors of many businesses we spoke with on our visit, Ostini said they were overwhelmed by Sideways pilgrims after the movie’s Oscar buzz brought the quiet Santa Ynez Valley to the attention of people other than West Coast wine geeks.
“We were packed every night” for a few years running, said Ostini, 72, who in addition to running the restaurant makes estimable wines. He was standing in his new tasting room, in front of a wall of photos and mementos from the filming. Here you see Madsen and Oh gleefully punching down wine in big plastic vats; there sits the cast and crew, including director Alexander Payne, posing for a group shot around a dinner table. A huge, magnum-sized bottle of a special 2003 Sideways bottling of Highliner pinot noir stands on a display shelf.
And Co-starring Pinot Noir
Ah, pinot. The movie is a paean to that lovely, finicky grape. Due to a geological anomaly, a set of mountain ridges runs east and west between the Pacific and the Santa Ynez Valley, ushering in cool ocean breezes and creating perfect corridors to grow pinot noir and its sister cool-weather grape, chardonnay. Average temperatures rise one degree per mile as you move inland, limiting the growing range for the varietals.
Miles waxes poetic about pinots throughout Sideways, including one scene where he describes it as a “thin-skinned, temperamental” grape that “needs time and attention” to thrive -- characteristics that, sadly, apply to him as well. But one of his most memorable tasting notes comes when he’s sitting at the Hitching Post bar, sampling one of Ostini’s pinots.
“Tighter than a nun’s asshole,” Miles proclaims, “but good concentration. Nice fruit.”
This hardly turned the visitors away from Hitching Post pinots after Sideways drove crowds to the restaurant and wines. “We barely had enough pinot to meet demand,” Ostini said. “We sold almost everything we had.”
The restaurant, specializing in regionally renowned barbecued steaks and other rustic fare, carefully-sourced and -prepared, has remained busy over the two intervening decades. Unlike some Santa Barbara County business operators, Ostini didn’t let his Sideways bounce go flat. His restaurant is still busy nearly every night, and his new tasting room is testament to his operations’ continuing popularity.
“You're only as good as the last meal you served,” says Ostini, 20 years after a moment of celluloid fame rocketed him to prominence.
What Miles and Jack Missed
Since Sideways has come and gone some land in the Santa Ynez Valley has changed hands and new money has moved in. This has altered the vibe, sometimes for the better.
For instance the first place Miles and Jack visit in the film, Sanford Winery, is now Peake Ranch Winery. The new owner, hedge fund operator John Wagner, has restored the name of the property to honor its original owner, Channing Peake, a rancher and accomplished abstract artist who was a friend of Pablo Picasso.
The property now features a contemporary tasting room worthy of Napa Valley, an immaculate, high-science production facility, and 50 acres of pinot and chardonnay on slices of geography offering varied exposures, each allowing different expressions of their grapes. Tastings take place on a terrace and deck overlooking gorgeous hills rolling with vines. The aromas that rise from the rosé are nearly ethereal.
But Sideways followers can still get their taste of nostalgia.
To get to Peake Ranch they follow one of the country roads that unfurls in the background as the two buddies drive along. Upon arriving, fans can snap a selfie in front of a deserted, ramshackle shed. It’s the place where Miles gives Jack an insufferable first lesson in how to taste wine. It ends with an exasperated Miles asking, “Are you chewing gum?”
It’s Not All Drinking
In the movie, Jack and Miles play golf between tastings. Had Sideways been made today they might have visited Highline Adventures in Buellton, which opened in 2022. It offers ziplines claimed to include the highest, steepest, and fastest in California. (Cue Jack laughing wildly, Miles screaming in falsetto.)
They might have enjoyed a different kind of wine country conveyance back at Fess Parker, where today you can take a 75-minute horseback ride through the 700 acres of upper vineyards and cattle land near the winery. Along the vines of syrah and grenache at Rodney’s Vineyard you see the operation’s wagyu cattle dozing in the shade. Miniature donkeys, there to protect the herd from coyotes and other predators, suspiciously eye the horses. (Strange fact: The Parker property abuts Neverland, Michael Jackson’s former amusement park for children.)
Fess Parker -- the famed Davy Crockett actor who turned wine man when the Hollywood gig ran its course -- was still alive when Sideways was filmed. But since his death in 2010 the family business, now in its third generation, is thriving in Santa Ynez and beyond, if operating a bit above Miles and Jack’s pay grade. The guys wouldn't have been able to afford the luxe Fess Parker Inn in Los Olivos, one of the county’s most prestigious accommodations for the platinum card set, or eaten at its spectacular fine dining restaurant Nella Kitchen & Bar.
Miles and Jack ate well, but 20 years on nearby Los Alamos, a dusty filling-station pull-off from Highway 101, has become the valley’s improbable fine dining destination. It has half a dozen first-rate restaurants and tasting rooms along its single main drag. Bell's, a lovely small dining room serving locally-sourced French bistro food, has earned the valley’s only Michelin star. It’s the evening tasting menu that gets all the high-cuisine love from the food magazines, but some people heading up 101 stop off just to pick up an egg salad sandwich.
Tasting Different
The valley's wine has continued to diversify from pinots and chardonnays over the last 20 years. We met Sonja Magdevski, who produces wines in Los Alamos under the labels Clementine Carter and the Feminist Party. She’s been working independently as a winemaker for the two decades since Sideways came out, buying grapes from some of the best growers in the region, determined to do different things with the terroir and fruit available. “You have to stay true to yourself,” and not just follow what others are doing, said Magdevski, who has little interest in pinots and chardonnays. “The whole idea is, there has to be change....It’s life.”
Among the wines we tasted was the obscure white varietal roussanne, which Magdevski fermented in a concrete egg and moved to stainless steel. That’s about as far from a Santa Ynez chardonnay as you can get.
In the town of Los Olivos, Storm Wines has also been around since the Sideways debut. But owner Ernst Storm, who hails from South Africa, makes among many other bottles a distinctive sauvignon blanc “in the Southern Hemisphere style,” he says. “You don’t find that much around here.”
Storm’s sauvignon blanc smells fruity and drinks bone dry, almost like those from New Zealand. Grown in the Santa Ynez Valley well to the east of the cool ocean breezes, it demonstrates how the area is continuing to diversify -- and surprise discriminating wine drinkers.
Don’t You Dare Say Merlot
In perhaps the most memorable wine geek moment in Sideways, Jack and Miles are having an urgent conversation outside a restaurant in the town of Los Olivos. Jack is trying to convince Miles to keep things light during a double date with Maya and Stephanie.
“Do not sabotage me,” says Jack, directing Miles not to spill the beans that in two days he’s due to take his wedding vows. “And if they want to drink merlot, we’re drinking merlot.”
Miles reluctantly agrees to conceal Jack’s deceit, but draws a red line at merlot. “If anyone orders merlot, I am leaving. I am not drinking any fucking merlot!”
Some say that this throwaway line tanked merlot sales. It can be hard to pin down cause and effect, but it’s true that over the last 20 years U.S. merlot production is down about 30 percent, while pinot sales in grocery stores jumped 18 percent in the year after the movie was released, and have increased steadily each year since.
In any event, the memorable double date scene was filmed inside the Los Olivos Wine Merchant & Cafe. The restaurant serves creative California cuisine, much of it grown on owners’ Sam and Shondra Marmorstein’s organic farm a mile away. The alley outside remains a Sideways touchstone; my wife and I saw a couple taking selfies on the spot one afternoon.
The inside of the restaurant remains quite recognizable, though there are no tables along the long wall of wine bottles where the dinner scene was shot. Sam Marmorstein says director Payne wanted tables moved there so wine bottles would be in the background. In the sequence, Miles drunk-dials his ex-wife from a payphone located in a fake hallway that was constructed only for the shooting.
So there my wife and I were, completing our Sideways tour by having dinner at the very site where Miles so famously sneers away merlot. As we perused the wine list, I couldn’t resist asking the sommelier: “So, do you have any merlot?”
Wine director Jonathan Lynn smiled, and retreated to the wine wall. He brought over a bottle from Paradise Springs Winery in Santa Barbara County. In brash gold letters the label read “F’ing Merlot.”
Twenty years after the release of the movie that so indelibly disparaged an otherwise worthy grape, rest assured you can now visit Sideways country and get yourself a fine bottle of f’ing Merlot.
-30-