Can Hollywood Please Get Wine Right?

Dear Hollywood,

I’m a big fan. I love the explosions, the car chases and the tearjerkers. But we need to talk. It’s not about CGI. I like dragons and superheroes as much as the next nerd. It’s not about Scientology. Go ahead and keep your secrets. I just have some questions about how wine is portrayed on the silver screen, our tiny screens and every screen in between.

I’m not talking about stuff like the hero’s glass of Cabernet magically changing into Sauvignon Blanc between shots. That was just a continuity error. I’ll leave it to the 20-year-old film school students and the randos keyboard-screaming from their parents’ basements to alert you to that cinematic faux pas.

Real wine lovers don’t get to see many movies or shows that really engage our passion, so when Hollywood gives us a nod, we come alive. But more often than not, when I see wine on the screen for more than 10 seconds, the premise is massively cringeworthy or there’s an error so absurd that it makes me spit out a perfectly delicious mouthful of whole-cluster-fermented, cool-climate Syrah.

Listen, I could go on for days about why British aristocrats wouldn’t serve a Bordeaux with Dover sole. But I won’t. Because even though I’ve got enough time to binge-watch Drops of God, I don’t have the patience to explain why that particular series worked better for wine consumers than for professionals. Spoiler alert: Exploding flavor clouds look cool, but don’t get close to the heart of how wine tasting actually works.

I’m a fan and here to help. Here’s a quick list of lazy errors and boring tropes that you can easily avoid in the future.

Wine Glass Selection

You’ll find this shocking, but there are right and wrong answers here. Yes, there are a million different types of wine glasses. Yes, it can all be a little confusing. No, they are not interchangeable, even though the set designer likes how the rounder ones look on the table. 

For aficionados, wine glass choice is taken almost as seriously as bottle selection. So if the wine is crucial to the scene, ask someone who knows before just choosing randomly. See also: Drinking wine out of Mason jars—don’t do it.

The ‘Screw Caps Are Cheap’ Joke

Seriously, screw this one. We’ve all seen it before: A young person brings a bottle of wine to dinner at their in-laws’ house and the MIL looks skeptically at the bottle, sneers and says: “A screw cap…how… convenient.” And the laugh track hits. 

This sitcom punch line started in the ’80s, and even then, it wasn’t funny or true. Plenty of exceptional wines come under screw caps. Want to really burn those Gen-Z youngsters for their

taste in wine? Clown them for savoring the barnyard notes in their go-to pét nat. Better yet, flip it all around and have the hipster scoff at his dad’s dusty old bottle of Napa Cabernet or high-octane, old-vine Zin.

Insanely Overfilled Glasses

The amount of wine poured in a glass should be around five or six ounces. Stop putting three times that much in oversized glasses. Have you ever tried to hold or swirl a wine glass with that much liquid in it? 

Half the time, the stem would simply snap out of sheer exhaustion and possibly exasperation. Yes, it looks like there’s very little wine in the glass when you pour the correct amount. There are reasons for this. Trust me.

The ‘Stressed-out Suburban Chardonnay Mom’

Listen, soccer moms love Chardonnay. We know. But can we stop with the wine-shaming? Her kids are teenagers and her husband’s a boor. Just watching this show makes us want to drink heavily, too. Maybe rethink literally everything about this tired premise?

I could go on, but you get the point. This stuff is our forte, not yours. If you have questions, we’d be more than happy to lend our services for a measly producer credit. Wine is a cultural touchpoint, with multiple millennia of history and rituals that surround its place in our culture. I’m guessing this might be lost on Hollywood folks more savvy to semaglutide than Sémillon, but if y’all could just stop using wine as an analog for pretentiousness, that would be a really great start. 

If I can help with any future projects, hit me up. Have your people talk to my people.

P.S. Châteauneuf-du-Pape is a region, not a winery. Stop using it like that.

P.P.S. Not gonna lie, the flavor/color explosions in Drops of God did look pretty dope.

This article originally appeared in the May 2025 Film issue of Wine Enthusiast magazine. Click here to subscribe today!

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