‘The Sideways effect’, as it was dubbed, led to increased American Pinot Noir plantings and decreased consumption of value-priced Merlot wines. Pickett’s book was published by St Martin’s Press months before the movie debuted. In 2018, his stage adaptation of Sideways opened. And Blackstone Publishing has just published Sideways: New Zealand, with further releases to follow.
‘I was venturing north to the Santa Ynez Valley to play golf with a friend named Roy. I was a golf prodigy from age eight to 13, but then I quit dead cold. I picked up a club in my 30s because I needed a way to get out of my head as a broke writer living in Los Angeles. Eventually, I started staying over in Buellton at the Windmill Inn – now the Sideways Inn – and I’d go to The Hitching Post. It looked like a biker bar, but inside, people were talking about wine.
‘At the same time, I was getting into wine, spending my Saturdays in LA at a place called Epicurus. But I couldn’t afford to bring expensive bottles to the after-parties that spilt out after the wine tastings. I felt excluded.
‘But in Santa Ynez, it was casual and fun. Roy encouraged me to write a screenplay about our trips. The screenplay didn’t work, so I wrote it as a novel instead titled Two Guys on Wine. My agent didn’t like the title. He said it sounded too much like a non-fiction travelogue. So I’m re-reading my book,
