I don't know anything about wine, but isn't Napa Valley the area in California renowned for its wines? Definitely more world-famous than the Santa Barbara area, right? So why would wine aficionados be in Santa Barbara, and not in Napa? Just curious.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
It's much, much closer to Los Angeles, where the movie and television business is located.
shareto me its the same place,if you are north of ventura , it is napa valley,
if you look at the filming locations its all in buelton and santa maria which IS NAPA VALLEY. they go to Solvang and all those locations there.
so the film is in napa, santa barbara has vine too though
Buellton and Santa Maria are over 300 miles from Napa Valley. They are not part of Napa Valley at all.
if you are north of ventura , it is napa valley,
The area they filmed the movie in is just 3 hours north of L.A. -- perfect for a road trip for Miles and Jack. It includes Solvang, Buellton, and Santa Maria. Plus the Pinot Noir up there is outstanding. My wife and I visited in the aftermath of the film, and visited several of the wineries and sites including the Hitching Post restaurant. Look into Santa Barbara county jeep tours if you are going to be in that area.
shareBecause in the book it takes place there, not Napa.
shareReasonable question. (I was surprised by this as well.) Napa is also reachable from L.A. in one day's drive. And a far more prominent (and attractive) wine area.
But I guess the book was set in the Santa Ynez Valley.
From Los Angeles to Napa is about a eight-hour drive, through the boring Central Valley. The Santa Maria Valley is what, three hours away?
And I've been to both places many times, and live about an hour from the Napa Valley (I was there yesterday for a massage). The Napa Valley is very attractive and has tons of wineries but isn't outstandingly scenic by the standards of California, unless you really like the sight of vineyards. The Santa Maria area is equally attractive, perhaps more so, and as the protagonists of this film are a couple of lazy bastards who'd rather spend their weekend getting hammered than driving past Modesto, of course they'd choose the closer wine country area.
Sideways is adapted from the novel of the same name by Rex Pickett.
The novel took a lot of inspiration from Pickett's life during the early-mid 1990s. In Pickett's own words:
'Back then, the Santa Ynez Valley was a little known wine region north of Santa Barbara. Maybe 50 wineries – now more than 250. Very little pinot noir had been planted in the 90s when I started sojourning up there, first to play golf, then to get familiar with the wines. I loathed Los Angeles and the cruel film industry that had brought me so much misery. So I would throw my golf clubs in the car and take off. Soon, instead of golfing, I went wine tasting. I hung out at the Hitching Post restaurant and befriended local winemakers. My fascination deepened. I discovered small, ramshackle tasting rooms in this sylvan paradise a mere two hours from the horrors of LA, and I thought: “This is heaven.”
On one trip, I brought along my friend Roy Gittens, an electrician on my failed second film. We went wine tasting. I made him laugh. Tasting room after tasting room. More wine. And some golf. And ostrich and pinot at the Hitching Post. At some point during that trip, he suggested I write a screenplay about guys who go wine-tasting. Galvanised, I wrote a screenplay called Two Guys on Wine. I didn’t like it. There was something about it that didn’t work.'
Two Guys on Wine eventually became the novel Sideways.
The above quote is from this article by Pickett at https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/15/sideways-author-i-was-ready-to-shoot-myself-then-i-found-pinot-noir