Wine and life—or at least wine and pop culture—intersected in two very enjoyable ways for me last week. I happened upon the first in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, which is my daily paper of choice (I suffer the pun-filled headlines and painful editorial page for the outstanding culture and food-and-wine features). The Journal has just added two new wine columnists: Jay McInerney and Lettie Teague. McInerney has long written about wine for the now-defunct House & Garden magazine, and his two books on wine, A Hedonist in the Cellar and Bacchus and Me, are collections of those H&G columns.
I love his new column in the Journal—it’s brimming with evocative, conversational descriptors, like when he compares Dom Pérignon pink Champagne to the actress Julianne Moore, whom he had just run into in the West Village. Teague’s column is equally impressive, but there’s a bit more ‘wine industry insider’ in her tone—which makes sense, given her longtime status as wine editor for Food and Wine magazine. The two writers will share the On Wine column, appearing on alternate Saturdays.
Later in the day that marked McInerney’s column debut, I happened to rent A Good Year, the Russell Crowe adaptation of Peter Mayle’s novel about a London financier who gives up—not quite voluntarily—his manic urban existence to run a long-lost uncle’s vineyard in Provence. The plot is a bit thin, but the film is pure eye candy. Pair it with a nice Bandol.
The Home Glass 