a storyOne film, measured

In October 2004 a comedy about two men on a road trip through Santa Barbara County put a speech about pinot noir into cinemas, and the American wine trade could see it in the sales figures within months.

In the months after release, merlot sales fell 2% and pinot noir sales rose 16% in the western United States. A 2009 Sonoma State University study found the film slowed merlot's growth and pushed its price down, but concluded that its main effect was a rise in pinot noir's volume and price, and in wine consumption overall.

The road trip runs through the Santa Ynez Valley and the Sta. Rita Hills, and the tasting rooms it passed got a decade of visitors out of it. Inference — the timing helped: the Sta. Rita Hills AVA had been established in 2001, so a region with a new name on the label got a national advertisement for free, three years in.

It did not teach anyone what pinot noir tastes like, and it did not change a single thing in a vineyard. The vines that carried the increase were already in the ground — planted by people who had spent the 1980s and 1990s being told the variety was a dead end.