When I was writing my column, I would almost always be recognized when I was in a restaurant, even if I was reviewing it and had booked under a fake name, so free stuff would start coming out of the kitchen on a conveyer belt, fantastic wines would be opened at my table. Now I can't even get a reservation on the pizza joint on the corner.
What's important in a cellar is having wines that have a broad range of drinkability, which California Cabernet does. Wines with a broad range of drinkability give you a lot of flexibility; they are the sort of wines that make me feel secure. I think of my wine cellar as security - if the apocalypse comes, I can just go down to the cellar.
Essentially, wines are fermented grape juice, so I'm trying to make the point that the wine world is about scores and marketing and kind of creating a scarce resource where they don't really exist.
I don't really have a life outside of movies. But I like to climb mountains and walk the dogs. I like fine wines and good restaurants.
The first wine I drank, a Chateau Haut-Brion, I was 22, it was my first glass of wine, and I discovered voluptuousness. From there, I started tasting French wines, then Spanish wines, then Italian wines.
When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines.
And with the money from your corn, from your rents, and from the issues of pleas in your courts, and from your stock, arrange the expenses of your kitchen and your wines and your wardrobe and the wages of servants, and subtract your stock.
I don't drink coffee. I like nice wines with dinner.
In real life, I don't fall in love with the guy who wines and dines me, I fall in love with the flaws and the humanity.
Don't let anyone tell you what you ought to like... Some wines that some experts think are absolutely exquisite don't appeal to me at all.