Or, how bad Pinot has replaced bad Merlot: The Devil Seeks Forgiveness from Merlot | Wine-Searcher News & Features
For me the percentage of bad Pinot I have drunk exceeds the percentage of bad Merlot.
IMO more interesting that the screenplay writer got screwed worse then Merlot did. Maybe there is something to those buried cattle horns.
^^ Rex Pickett didn’t write the screenplay. He wrote the original novel. Alexander Payne (the director) wrote the screenplay based on the novel.
Also: Pickett did get screwed on the deal, but I’m also not surprised his two sequels to Sideways haven’t been optioned.
I’ve read the first two novels and tried to read the third, and IMHO none of them are very well written. Painful to read.
I think he was lucky that Payne saw the potential in the first novel, optioned it, and shepherded it through the long process of getting it green lit and produced.
The best part of that article is Pickett’s comment about Meiomi.
I have not had pleasing American Pinot Noir under $20 for the usual confluence of reasons. I have had some good ones for a little more.
Botton feeding of Pinot Noir domestic and from France(add a few bucks) is usually disappointing for me. With high prices for good Pinot Noir grapes, one’s expectations should be realistic.
I think he was lucky that Payne saw the potential in the first novel, optioned it, and shepherded it through the long process of getting it green lit and produced.
I completely agree. I only read his first novel and it’s clear that the success of Sideways, the movie, was due to Payne and the actors rather than the original novel. I’m not sure the novel would have been published if Payne hadn’t made the movie (movie was shot before the book was released).
-Al
I don’t know, varietal merlot is pretty boring. Was boring before Sideways, and still is. Picking an unknown bottle of merlot off the shelf was almost a guarantee of a bland, non-specific winelike experience. The tasting note was just a shrug.
Add a bit of cabernet (sauvignon or franc) and you get something that’s much more than the sum of its parts. Just needs a partner to add some aromatic, acidic, and tannic complexity. There’s no shame in that, some of my favorite wines have a good portion of melot. But left all by its lonesome, I’d rather have varietal carignan, counoise, grenache, or a dozen other grapes. So for me, the catch phrase still holds true.
Now, pinot noir is bad and disappointing in its own way. It’s certainly much more expensive. But bad pinot noir is bad in an interesting way, in my opinion. Sometimes it’s bad because they have added 23% petite sirah, or overcropped it, or overripened it, or overloaded it with oak, but it’s almost never boring.
How do you feel about:
Castello di Ama L’Apparita
Scalette Piantonaia
San Giusto a Rentennano La Ricolma
Hardly boring, IMHO.
Why are any of you buying bad Pinot or bad Merlot?
One of the better wines I’ve had in the last 12 months was a Once and Future Merlot. West of Temperance makes a good one from Napa as well.
Think there are a few cases of Berserker Cuvee left.
For real?
Seriously… what?
I texted someone that deals with inventory. Her response was “Not very much but a little.” I know that would be the 2014. I don’t know how much a little is. I would guess less than 10 cases but don’t know.
I assume he was referring to California merlot.
FYI, you might consider adding Petrus to your list.
Nothing good is going to come out of the central valley, for the most part. The vines there are going to be grafted over to whatever is popular de jour. So, if you have a grape type that becomes the IT grape type, most likely the better versions of wine from that grape are going to go up in price and the cheaper versions are going to be coming from the central valley or other places not really suited to that grape type - if it were suited to that grape type, the price of wines from that grape type would be higher.
As someone else suggested, the best values in California wine are going to come from grape types that are unfashionable (and so the prices are going to be reasonable) but which some subset of producers really love and will plant.
And, if you want to know what those are, just subscribe to Tom Hill’s threads. 
Quite. Or any decent Pomerol for that matter.
I think a number of grapes are pretty dire in the industrial versions, but well made wines from good terroir are utterly different. Another example would be mass market Pinot Grigio versus top Sudtirol wines.
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Roger Boulton is a UC Davis Prof studying/researching wine