6 great movies

for wine-lovers staying home

Sideways

The movie that single-handedly damaged the market for Merlot almost beyond redemption. It’s the story of a road trip to Santa Barbara taken by Jack, a past-hisprime actor, and Miles, an unsuccessful writer, to celebrate Jack’s upcoming wedding. Funny, sad and an absolute masterclass in imbecilic narcissism.

Wine Country

Featuring our favourite besties, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, along with the marvellous Maya Rudolph, this film follows a group of women celebrating their friend’s 50th birthday with a wine-tasting tour in the Napa Valley. A great idea that doesn’t always deliver: it’s very funny in parts but lags in others.

The Secret of Santa Vittoria

This beautiful old ’60s movie stars Anthony Quinn and Anna Magnani. It’s set in the year 1943, when the occupying Germans want to take the Santa Vittoria wines back to Germany with them. Anthony Quinn plays the mayor who organises the villagers and gets them to hide the wines. It becomes a battle of wits between him and the German commander, who starts searching every building in the area for the wines.

A Good Year

Russell Crowe and Marion Cotillard star in this romcom about a pain-in-the-neck London trader who, when his uncle dies, inherits a wine farm in France. He heads out there to sell the property, but events contrive to keep him in France for a while – long enough to start a relationship with Fanny, a local café owner. He goes back to find his life has changed… and he needs to make some decisions about a new direction.

Sour Grapes (a documentary)

Apparently Rudy Kurniawan had an incredible knowledge of wine and the wine market. In one year, he made $35 million from auctioning off two lots of his wine. Extremely impressive, until one wine producer twigged that one of the wines had been auctioned – in a vintage that had never been made. Realising Kurniawan was a fraud, he sets out to expose him – and this riveting doccie is the result.

A Walk in the Clouds

This stars Keanu Reeves before he learnt to act; nevertheless, it’s a lovely, lush, sentimental escape that’s beautifully shot. Set in the California winelands just after WWll, Keanu Reeves’s character, Paul, agrees to pretend to be married to a young woman who is pregnant and abandoned. Of course they fall properly in love, but Paul omits to tell her that he’s still married to someone else…