After bagging on Food & Wine in a previous post, it seems only fair to point out their highly entertaining “Three Inspiring Cellars” feature from this month’s issue.
While it can be argued that the downside of Gourmet and Food & Wine is that they’re basically choking on $100 bills, this weakness can also be a strength. For example: when they do stuff like having three chic design firms create fantasy wine cellars.
Now that’s a good use of buckets of wealth. Paying $4,000 for a dress in order to look trendy for an overpriced restaurant? That’s the kind of “I done won me the Powerball!” fantasy that gives America’s elite a bad name. But spending $400,000 for a wine storage unit that Spock would probably find “fascinating”? This is where money-porn gets interesting.
The best of the three models featured is by David Rockwell, who designed Nobu and Country in New York City. It’s a straight-from-Twin Peaks “cabin” designed to sit outdoors, featuring—wait for it— fireplaces on both the interior and the exterior of the wine vault. Also, dig this:
The 30-by-20-foot cabin is constructed from wine-related materials—oak for the exterior, cork for the floor and ceiling, and glass for displaying the stored bottles.
Now, they never quite go into the purpose of the outdoor fireplace (for roasting marshmallows? a gathering place for chilly squirrels?), but it’s the kind of nutty flair that brightens your day, whether or not you—or your entire extended family—can afford it.
The peole I know who can afford David Rockwell to design a wine cellar for them 1) wouldn’t, 2) know enough NOT to put a fireplace in a wine cellar, and 3) would never show it off in a magazine.
Alas, Gourmet. I remember when it was one of America’s finest magazines, and actually was written for gourmets, not arriviste snobs who can’t tell money from class. You remember, before Ruth Reichle decided to use her power as editor to show all those people who actually got invited to the Prom who was the big, important girl now! I remember reading Gerald Asher’s (the finest wine writer writing in the English language) article every month, and wanting to go out, immediately, and buy bottles of the wine he was covering that month; she turned that into “six New Zealand whites to serve with Guacamole!”. Sadly, Gourmet is just another lifestyle rag, with wet-dream articles about restaurants you’ll never eat in, and hotels you can’t afford to stay in. Dangling all those expensive things and thinking it’s “class” is really the same as leaving the label on the sleeve of a new jacket to show everone that it really IS camelhair. Really! 100% See?