What do Jim Carrey, Johnny Depp and Whoopi Goldberg have in common besides lots of fame and lots of money? Lots of famous wine that costs lots of money.
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In his waning Hollywood years, Orson Welles was paid a good deal of much-needed cash to shill various products with his sonorous delivery and commanding presence. The most memorable of these adventures was a TV commercial for Gallo wine in which the auteur of Citizen Kane, comfortably seated i in his enormity like a true connoisseur, lauded the output of a brand winery best known for its inexpensive, mass-produced reds closely associated with college-dorm parties. Welles, who was, of course, actually quite sophisticated about wine, performed with self-delighted hamminess, delivering a line-reading of the Gallo ethos, "We will sell no wine before its time," with a knowing twinkle in his eye.
That all happened in the 70s, when the country at large had ceased to take Welles seriously, but, thanks in some small part to Welles, was about to start taking California wine very seriously indeed. Brothers Ernest and Julio Gallo got mass America used to the idea of drinking wine by making their product affordable and ubiquitous. Today they make premium wines for mainstream America, having moved in on the market that the Mondavi family, the other household name in the history of West Coast vineyards, was instrumental in opening up. Hollywood lies almost adjacent to the southern tip of the terrain where countless independent wineries now produce high-quality and even collectible wines, so it makes sense that there would be an element in the entertainment industry attuned to the joys and subtleties of the grape. And now, as in the days of Gallo and Welles, the wine industry is attuned to the value of Hollywood.
Even today, the language of wine aficionados sounds to most Americans like an elitist code--rich in decadent European cadences, employed by a cabal of effete hedonists lounging about in plush surroundings. Those who verbally caress the objects of their obsession with adjectives like "jammy," "satiny" and "buttery," and enthuse about such impenetrable qualities as "hints of cassis, black cherries and burnt spices lurking in the background" are wielding the argot of the oenophile. Hollywood loves to speak it. And now, far more than at any time in the past, Hollywood often knows what it's talking about when phrases like "plums on the nose" come up.
The perennial attributes of Hollywood success--the Bentley with smoke-tinted windows or, for more cerebral types, the Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chair and the Corbusier chaise longue--continue to be in style but like art collecting in the '80s, wine connoisseurship has increasingly come to symbolize the sophisticated edge of Hollywood glamour. These days a great many stars, agents, producers and directors maintain home collections where legendary vintages like a 1985 La Tâche or a 1959 Mouton-Rothschild--the oenologic equivalents of 10-carat ice--age in quiet anticipation.
Good wine is constantly evolving and gaining in intensity and flavor until it peaks, whereupon it begins its inevitable descent. It is a development that mirrors the human aging process or, you might say, a career in Hollywood. Little wonder players and insiders get drawn into the drama and suspense of wine collecting. Bob Golbahar, an expert sommelier who owns West L.A.'s Twenty Twenty Wine Merchants, has been catering to and providing perfect temperature-controlled storage space for high-profile Bacchus devotees since the mid-'70s (for years Mel Brooks has been coming to him for magnums of his favorite Bordeaux, Château Lafite-Rothschild.) and knows exactly whose tastes run to the most fabled vintages.
Johnny Depp is partial to Golbahar's well-aged treasures from the Chateau Pétrus estate in the Bordeaux region of France, and in this refined but expensive enthusiasm he is not alone. Nicole Kidman told this publication not long ago that her favorite red wine is a 1975 Pétrus, which currently retails for about $1,500. "I have expensive taste," she confessed. "I know quite a bit about wine because I drink it a lot." Pétrus vintages are so beloved by Whoopi Goldberg that she has been known to say (and perchance not entirely in jest) that she would like to buy the Bordeaux estate and retire there one day. Among the first wines Golbahar himself ever sipped was a 1947 Pétrus, and he considers the memory priceless--as is the wine itself, which Golbahar nevertheless stocks at Twenty Twenty. A magnum can be yours for $22,500. The thrill of enjoying a bottle of 57-year-old Pétrus extends beyond taste buds. A particularly old and venerable vintage comes swathed in layers of history and romance; it's like swirling a tiny bit of the exquisite past around in your mouth. Pétrus Pomerols were served at the wedding of Britain's Queen Elizabeth in 1947; they were favored by the Kennedy clan in the '50s.
L.A.'s most visible sommelier to the stars is Christian Navarro, who co-owns Wally's wine shop in Westwood, from whence he has catered to top names like Jack Nicholson, Sharon Stone, Danny DeVito and Tom Cruise. (Cruise's pick: Domaine de la Romanée-Conti's 1985 La Tache, a Burgundy made from what are thought to be the world's finest Pinot Noir grapes.) Navarro has witnessed firsthand the transformation of many a top name into true wine aficionado. "They'll have a great bottle of wine somewhere in the world and it will hit them like a ton of bricks: 'Oh my God, this is amazing! What else is there?' Based on those experiences, I try to find out what exactly is right for them."
The names of the Hollywood luminaries with the palate and will to do more than make a show of the latest touted vintage are surprising. If Jim Carrey invites you over for dinner, he will most likely serve you nothing less than a Bordeaux rated a maximum 100 points by Wine Advocate's uber-arbiter Robert Parker. The actor's fave wine is the 1982 Château Latour, a classic Bordeaux customarily priced around $800. According to Twenty Twenty's Golbahar, Sandra Bullock, Craig Kilborn and Brendan Fraser have been known to occasionally pick up outstanding vintages as gifts, but it is hard-core collectors like Denzel Washington, Julio Iglesias and Chi McBride who take their pleasure in wine most seriously. As does Jackie Chan, who enthusiastically collects Château d'Yquem vintages from the '70s through the '90s. The famed estate exercises such strict quality control in its grapes selection that only one glass of wine per vine is reportedly produced.
Meanwhile, the burgeoning California winemakers have been courting their illustrious fellow citizens to the south to take advantage of Hollywood's growing enthusiasm. Auctions hosted by Napa Valley winemakers have become star-studded social occasions. At a recent event hosted by General Motors and the Napa Valley Vintners Association, NYPD Blue star Henry Simmons led the proceedings, while Mira Sorvino and husband Chris Backus looked on as such loot as 109 bottles of superb wines and a special Cadillac XLR Roadster Convertible outfitted with a custom-made aluminum wine cooler in the trunk was sold for $220,000. Last July, Chalk Hill Estate Vineyards owners Peggy and Fred Furth hosted a benefit for Sonoma County children's charities and the Russian National Orchestra's outreach program for orphans, auctioning off a dinner with Sophia Loren based on her favorite recipes at her Southern California Ponti Ranch (six couples bid a total of $240,000 for the privilege) and a walk-on part in an upcoming Sydney Pollack film.
California vintners have a home court advantage in all aspects of the heated-up competition for marketing ties to Hollywood. Calistoga's Sterling Vineyards provided a 2001 Reserve Chardonnay and a 2000 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon to this year's post-Oscars Governors Ball. The redoubtable Beaulieu Vineyard, among Napa Valley's oldest, stocked the post-Emmys bash with its 2001 Reserve Carneros Chard and a 2000 Tapestry Reserve. But French exporters make their play for entertainment industry ties too. When the official guild of Champagne makers launched its L.A. chapter last fall with a bash at the Beverly Hills Hotel, bubbly fans David Hyde Pierce and Ron Livingston showed up to be inducted as honorary members--and sip vintage cuvees from France's most prestigious Champagne makers.
The wine with the hottest heavyweight endorsement at the moment is one from a winery owned by Hollywood's own Francis Ford Coppola, who began bottling his vintages almost three decades ago. Naysayers dubbed his risky enterprise "Francis' folly" in its early days, but today the Niebaum-Coppola Winery makes a quarter of a million cases of wine under a plethora of labels, and Coppola the elder rakes in more revenue as a vintner than he ever did as a filmmaker. Their newest product is the Sofia Mini, a line of canned bubbly launched this spring that re-imagines sparkling wine for the Hollywood neo-hip-ster. Cleverly packaging a blend of Pinot Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc in 187-ml rosé cans that come with individual tiny straws, the Sofia Minis have been publicized in a print campaign starring the very person who inspired them--Oscar-winning filmmaker Sofia Coppola. There she is, staring back from the pages of glossy magazines, sleepy-eyed, wrapped in a rabbit fur bomber jacket, with a six pack's worth of empty Mini cans sprinkled around her like confetti: Could there ever be a more fitting--or more arresting--visual rendition of Hollywood's love affair with wine?
Speaking of visual renderings: Sideways, the new indie film from virtuoso filmmaker Alexander Payne, is a delightfully wry wine-centric yarn in which individual wines from California's Central Coast like Sea Smoke and Bien Nacido Pinots and Andrew Murray Syrahs, are as distinct a presence as the film's protagonists. Payne, who is a committed oenophile himself, based his script on the eponymous novel by Rex Pickett and kept in a lot of the real-life vintages that figure prominently in it. He also slipped in some personal favorites. A 1988 Sassicaia--a Tuscan Cab that is most special to him--shows up in a turning-point scene. "That's the wine that really turned me on," the director notes. "I'd always liked wine, but that was a bit of an epiphany. I thought, 'Wow! Wine can do this?'"
Wine seems to be on everybody's mind lately: at this year's Cannes film fest, Mondovino, an exposé of the behind-the-scenes struggles within the global wine industry, was one of only two documentaries--besides eventual Palme d'Or winner Fahrenheit 9/11--screening in the official competition.
"For a long time people of stature have been making wine," says Wally's Navarro. The list of celebs-turned-winemakers in fact encompasses everybody from Sting (who bottles his own Chianti at his estate in Tuscany) to Sam Neill (who owns a winery in New Zealand) to ultra-gourmand Gerard Depardieu, who owns multiple vineyards in the Bordeaux region and the Loire Valley, and several upscale restaurants where he serves his own vintages. Depardieu is so passionate about his grapes that his business card reportedly identifies him as "acteur-vigneron."
Coppola may have proved his doubters wrong by turning his winery into a profitable business, but the famously up-and-down wine industry is not where the Hollywood elite go for financial respite from their own crazy business. "I don't think [celebrities] are in the wine industry just to make money--they probably already have enough of it," says L.A.-based wine importer Jean-Marc Descabannes. His Pascal Wines is a wholesale purveyor to some of the city's finest eateries--Bastide, L'Orangerie, Michael's--and he also organizes private wine tastings about town and sometimes sells directly to Hollywood customers like Dustin Hoffman (who favors a particularly powerful, oaky Meritage made by Washington state's Powers Winery and buys it in bulk). "I think some celebrities have a passion for wine and want to achieve their goal by producing their own bottles," he adds. "This is actually the ultimate accomplishment in the wine industry--enjoying dinner with your own name on the bottle."
Of course, enjoying dinner with any number of other names on the bottle will also do, and that's what Industry oenophiles are increasingly doing together. The qualities of the wines being consumed make for lively chat in any case, but when the connoisseurs/collectors get together, the hunt for great vintages and the thrill of acquiring them make for natural discussion centerpieces at the table. Monday nights are special for L.A. wine lovers, because that is usually when the most committed aficionados tend to schedule their wine club meets. There are at least six such groups, the oldest one, WOW (Wines of the World), still going strong after 25 years.
Filmmaker James Orr, who spends about $50,000 a year to stock his 5,000-bottle cellar, is co-founder with Navarro of the Hollywood Pour Boys. A recent club meet held in the private banquet room upstairs at Campanile restaurant drew several of Orr's oenophile friends, including TV and film producers Arthur Sarkissian, Stephen Gelber, Anthony Wilson and Rob Lee, WB Network chairman Garth Ancier, writer-director Jefery Levy, special effects whiz Stan Winston and Hollywood business manager Matt Lichtenberg. Jazz guitarist Anthony Wilson, who backs up chanteuse Diana Krall onstage and was in town on tour, and 3 Arts Entertainment partner Michael Rotenberg dropped by at the last minute. Hors d'oeuvres (cedar-smoked salmon crostini and roasted figs stuffed with foie gras) paired with a Marcassin Hudson Chard kicked off the proceedings, but the evening was dedicated to a vertical exploration of a cult California red, the Abreu Cabernet. The guests sampled nine different rare vintages of the pricey Cab and feasted in between on Campanile chef Mark Peel's sumptuous courses--agnolotti stuffed with ricotta, wild spinach and summer truffles; coriander-crusted sautéd duck breast with grilled peaches; and dry-aged prime rib with potato aligot, glazed shallots and haricots verts. Espresso paired with a grape sorbet dessert sobered up the guests for the trip home.
Of course, beyond sampling great vintages, the best thing about wine clubs is all that gorgeous wine talk. For Hollywood denizens or mere mortals alike, Orr points out, "The pleasure of talking about wine is second only to drinking it."
The Goblet According to Andrew
Andrew Firestone's stint as a TV Bachelor in the spring of 2003 introduced him to America as the kind of unusually self-assured young man who can discuss college football, articulate the merits of Rhône varietal wines, and effortlessly charm the pants off any interlocutors (or interlocutorettes) in the process. It does of course help that Firestone was born into a sophisticated clan with ties to the arts, California politics and business. His great-grandfather founded the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which was sold off to corporate investors years ago, and today the family business revolves around eight winemaking estates nestled in the Santa Ynez Valley along California's Central Coast. The 29-year-old heir currently oversees sales at the flagship Firestone Winery and here he passes along some tips for how to get started on the path to true wine connoisseurship:
GLASS MATTERS: You wouldn't buy a Ferrari and park it on the street, so if you're going to open an expensive bottle of wine, serve it in a proper glass--ideally Reidel stemware, but in any case crystalware, and the correct shape for the type of wine. A Bordeaux glass, for example, has a larger bulb in order to increase the surface area and let the wine breathe. You want the wine to open up a bit. White wines don't need that same contact with the air, so they're served in a smaller bulb. The design of the glass is also meant to channel the bouquet. If you serve a wine in the wrong glass, the bouquet escapes without your being able to enjoy it.
PROPER HOLD: It's one of those classic, traditional things that you observe if you're enjoying a glass of wine--you hold it by the stem so as not to alter the temperature of the wine. It's not as important for reds, because they're served closer to room temperature, but it matters for whites.
GET THEE TO A WINERY: This is something everybody should do, because it will make you a more interesting person: Go to a winery. Before you go and blow $80 on a bottle of wine, know where it comes from. Go see how wine is made. Have an expert talk you through tasting the wine. Know how to sip, see, smell and taste. A lot of people think wine is an elitist beverage that's expensive and made secretively in dark, hollowed caves. In fact, winemaking is a family-oriented, social activity. We're farmers--we create something from earth. It's a little bit of art, a little bit of science and a lot of romance.
WINE PLAY: This is my best advice for anybody who wants to have a fun evening with friends: Go to your local bottle shop, pick a style of wine and buy from three of four price classes, one under $10, one between $10 and $25, one between $25 and $40, and one that's very expensive. Brown-bag all of them, number them, and do a blind tasting using enough stemware so everybody can hold on to each of the wines. Have everybody write down their impressions and then discuss it! After everyone has talked about them, unveil the wines. A lot of times people will find that some of the more expensive wines are not the ones that taste the best to them. It's a good way to learn how subjective taste in wine can be.
IDEAL PAIRINGS: Supposedly, if you're eating pasta with a red sauce, you gotta have a big Bordeaux red. With chicken, you gotta drink Chardonnay. With fish, something light, like a Sauvignon Blanc. For dessert, a Riesling or a Muscat. There are guidelines in wine appreciation, but I don't think they're that rigid. Rhône varietal wines are my absolute favorites. The Syrah is a great dinner wine, a great before-dinner wine--in fact, a great breakfast wine! For dessert I'd have a Château d'Yquem if money weren't an obstacle, but I'll settle for a Riesling or a Muscat--both go well with fruit. Camembert with a little bit of honey and some walnuts is a great combination with a Viognier or a Chardonnay. Put a stronger cheese against something bolder--a Merlot or a Cabernet. I personally love baked Brie with a Merlot. I'm a big fan of blush Champagne, and with strawberries it's almost like a visual aphrodisiac. It's just a sexy combination.
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S.D.