Things to keep in mind:
The secret of taste.
In the film, as Miles and Jack prepare to have dinner with Maya and Sandra Oh’s Stephanie, Miles famously says “If anyone orders Merlot, I’m leaving. We are not drinking any fucking Merlot.” And that was that; sales of Miles’ preferred Pinot Noir skyrocketed, Merlot sales tanked for about a decade. People who were just getting into wine in the mid-aughts put that much of their trust in the palate of a fictional character. A character who is wrong about pretty much everything else in the movie. A character who steals from his own mother. Such is our deference to the tastes and opinions of angry white guys. Plus, the movie elides the real reason for Miles’s stance, which is much clearer in the book: Merlot was his ex-wife’s drink.
—posted 19 days ago
