It is easy for wine enthusiasts to get carried away sometimes and to over-think the whole idea of wine. Sure cure for thinking too much: go to a movie.

The Sideways Effect

Most readers will already be familiar with the Sideways effect, named for the 2004 motion picture of the same name. In this film one of the protagonists, Miles, expresses a deep love for Pinot Noir and a complete disdain for Merlot. He loves Pinot because it is so fragile …

“It’s a hard grape to grow. As you know. Right? It’s, uh, it’s thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It’s, you know, it’s not a survivor like cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and thrive even when it’s neglected. No, pinot needs constant care and attention. You know? And, in fact, it can only grow in these really specific, little tucked-away corners of the world. And only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand pinot’s potential can then coax it into its fullest expression.”

Merlot, by contrast, must be simple, sturdy, unsophisticated, easy. Anyone can make Merlot. Who wants to drink that — loser wine. (Wine geeks will remember that Miles’s most treasured wine — the one that he desperately drinks out of a styrofoam cup in a moment of self-pity — is ironically a mainly Merlot Cheval Blanc from Bordeaux.)

You may love the film or hate it, but its effect on the wine market is well known: it took an emerging Pinot Noir trend and magnified it, making Pinot the hottest grape in the vineyard. And it contributed to the decline in Merlot sales, too. It’s interesting that a movie could so shape the image of these wines as to produce significant market effects.

But that’s here in America. This could never happen in Britain, where wine consumers are more sophisticated.

The Bridget Jones Effect

But wait. It has, according to an article in The Telegraph. Chardonnay sales are slumping in Great Britain and British wine critic Oz Clarke blames it on Bridget Jones, the movie character who drowns her troubles in glass after golden glass of cheap Australian Chard. “Until Bridget Jones, Chardonnay was really sexy. After, people said, ‘God, not in my bar.” according to Clarke. Now, I guess, it’s loser wine like Merlot.

“Bridget Jones goes out on the pull [WineEconomist translation: singles bar scene], fails, goes back to her miserable bedsit, sits down, pours herself an enormous glass of Chardonnay, sits there with mascara running down her cheeks saying, ‘Dear diary, I’ve failed again, I’ve poured an enormous glass of Chardonnay and I’m going to put my head in the oven.’” Clarke writes, “Great marketing aid.”

A retail market analyst estimates that 7.5 million fewer shoppers picked Chardonnary this year in Great Britain. Sales of other white wines such as Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio have risen.

The biggest direct effect is in Australia, the source of much of Britain’s popularly priced Chardonnary. Foster’s has reportedly announced that it will not pay more than about $300 per ton for bulk-wine Chardonnay grapes next year, a low price and bad news for growers there. That will put the squeeze on them and they must wonder at the strange logic of the wine world where they suffer because Bridget Jones can’t seem to meet the right guy.

Wine and Identity

I haven’t seen the Bridget Jones films but I’ve watched Sideways and it is pretty clear to me that wine is a powerful image in the film because it is so obviously a metaphor for the main characters. Miles is just like the Pinot Noir that he describes — fragile, tragic and perhaps (and only perhaps) worth the effort that it takes to reach him. Jack, his gregarious, promiscuous buddy, really is Merlot. Easy, simple, stupid at times, and very very popular.

The larger lesson to be learned from all this is the power of identity in consumer behavior. Affluent consumers don’t purchase products so much as they construct personal identities. Goods and services are not ends but means. This is true in many product areas (homes, fashion, autos), so why shouldn’t it be true for wine, too.

Although we may like to think that it is the wine that is the focus of our passion, the Sideways and Brenda Jones effects suggest that identity — how wine makes us think and feel about ourselves — may sometimes be more important than the wine itself in shaping the decisions that wine drinkers make.