Red, Red Wine

I finally got around to watching Sideways recently. I gotta say, overall, I didn't enjoy the movie. I'm not a big fan of movies where one character is a complete idiot, doing and saying ridiculous things, and manages with very little effort to convince some silly lackey to go along with every hare-brained (and sometimes even amoral) idea he has.

The most memorable line of the movie, of course, was "I'm not drinking any fucking merlot!" The guy was such a wine snob. Of course, that throwaway line appears to have had some consequences; I recently read in an article in the Washington Post that merlot sales suffered following the success of the movie.

At which point I thought about my own wine choices. I do generally like to order merlot at restaurants, just because I'm too lazy to really think about and weigh the merits of the various other reds out there. (Once, I told my table companions (within earshot of the waiter) that I liked merlots "just because I dig the silent 'T'." The waiter stifled a giggle, as did one of my companions.) Should I give it some more thought? I mean, I do like merlots...

But then I also sure as heck didn't want to find myself basing my wine choices on some stupid character in a movie. I'm an independent thinker, dammit, and the fact that some guy in some movie passionately hates merlot should not be a reason for me to abandon merlots in some anti-merlot conspiracy.

Then, however, I was invited to a dinner party where, as per my usual, I decided to take a bottle of wine. Looking through my (meager) wine collection -- consisting of four or five bottles, mostly from Whole Foods -- I came to realize that I didn't even have a bottle of merlot among them. They were, instead, two bottles of claret, a bottle of shiraz, a bottle of meritage (yummy!), and a bottle of pinot noir.

Turns out I had been gradually moving away from merlots even before I saw Sideways. Whew.