Decanter Cellar: 20 top-rated Merlots

All together now, how does it go?

‘I am NOT drinking any –ing Merlot!’

Miles Raymond’s infamously snobbish cry of rage in Sideways reverberated in the physical world as much as the celluloid one.

After it was uttered across cinemas in the US in 2004, the line is credited with causing a 2% drop in sales of Merlot in the western United States, and a 16% rise in sales of Pinot Noir.

The trend was subsequently reported in other markets such as the UK too.

The mythology of the ‘Sideways Effect’ is considerably exaggerated but it’s not entirely untrue. If you ever stop and wonder how and why there’s so much unimpressive Pinot being flogged at bargain basement prices (particularly in the US), what you’re seeing is the (viti)cultural ripple caused by the film.

And the double irony is that what caused Miles to be such a Merlot-hater was (his ex-wife, but also) because it was a grape that had become mainstream thanks to another moment that entered the cultural zeitgeist – 60 Minutes’ infamous 1991 segment on the ‘French paradox’.

Although the study behind the report is now treated with considerable scepticism, at the time it caused a boom in wine sales in the US.

And Merlot, being ripe and plummy and not too angular as varieties go, was the perfect grape to introduce a generation of new drinkers to wine.

Which obviously meant it began to attract scorn from aesthetes…