If we are what we love, then Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) is exactly like the wine he most treasures: Pinot. He loves that the grape is quirky and vulnerable--that it grows only in certain climates, that it tests the nurturing patience of its growers. And the flavor! For the connoisseur: haunting and thrilling. Which is just what his friends might say of the divorced, depressed, chronically romantic Miles.
His actor pal Jack (Thomas Haden Church) is a less learned oenophile. "Pinot Noir?" he asks, guzzling it as if it were Gatorade. "Then how come it's white?"
Sideways sends Miles, a schoolteacher and...