Beautiful event spoiled by cigars

Wines & Vines, Nov, 1996 by Alan Goldfarb

I've just returned from the Napa Valley Wine Auction and I'm mad as hell. I'm mad at the thin-skinned, meek vintners. And I'm peeved at those who think that smoking a cigar with their wine and with their food is the hippest, tieless, shirt-buttoned-to-the-collar-no-matter-if-it's-100-degrees coolest thing this side of their Range Rovers.

The yearly wine-fest / food-feast / schmooze-gala was always the best. Terrific wine, wonderful food, better company. Now they've gone and mucked it up with those damned cigars. Now its turned into a stink fest.

It started three years ago when Marvin Shanken and his Wine Spectator featured an article with enticingly beautiful Caribbean photos of Cuba and its cigars.

That piece gave tacit approval for anyone to smoke cigars. First it was in private rooms, with a glass of cognac, after dinner.

Then it was outside with a glass of cognac after dinner.

Then it came indoors, with a glass of cognac, with dessert.

Then a cigar here. And a cigar there.

At the post-auction dinner on the gorgeous fairways at the lovely Meadowood Resort in St. Helena, where a cool record $2.3 million was raised for Napa medical organizations, they started smoking before dinner. Cough. Hack. Give me a break!

Stop it. Stop it now. You, the well-intentioned folks of the California wine industry, have the power to put an end to it. I know you need to cater to those high rollers who buy up all your high-end wine.

But if you don't stop it now, you'll never get the rest of us to drink more than the two gallons a year we're barely drinking now.

You've been falling all over yourselves trying to present a positive image that wine is a healthful beverage. Wine mixed with cigars is not healthful.

I've learned that the board of directors of the Napa Valley Vintners Association - the auction's governing body - had a very contentious battle over whether or not to allow cigar smoking in the auxiliary barrel auction tent this year. There were many complaints last year.

So what did they do? After voting 8-3 to allow smoking outside the tent, they further allowed a San Francisco cigar company to sell its 3,000 cigars.

Never mind that the prices were inflated 100% over their normal retail price to $12-$30 a pop. A box of something called Partagas A50s went for $800.

I saw young women dragging awkwardly on one of those babies as if they were taking their first hit from a joint.

The air was so full of noxious cigar fumes that at times it became impossible to smell the aromas of one's wine or taste the beautiful food being served up by some of the Bay Area's greatest chefs.

Where else can you get such an accumulation of wonderful cooks all in one place at the same time? Thomas Keller from the great French Laundry was all over the valley cooking up a storm at four different locations. Lissa Doumani and her husband Hiro Sone from Terra hit the right note with their cold vichyssoise which cooled us all off in the 85 degree night.

Gary Danko, that great chef from The Dining Room at San Francisco's Ritz-Carlton served us a fabulous filet mignon, and Jan Bimbaum of Catahoula dug deep down with his fiery tamales, while Fred Halpert of Brava Terrace made the compote of summer fruit sing with sweetness.

And then there were those stogies.

Shame on all of you. Shame on you for putting up with this crap. If you want to fool yourself into thinking it's good to be the king, go off somewhere on the other side of the auction grounds and smoke away. Just don't bring that thing in here.

And shame on you, wine industry, for putting up with it. You were headed in the right direction. Wine drinking, with food, was just beginning to reach critical mass. If you don't put the genie back in the bottle now, they'll soon be saying critical mass for you. Cough. Hack, Wheeze.

Alan Goldfarb writes for a number of wine publications, including Wines & Vines. A slightly different version of this piece appeared in the Montclarion, a California newspaper.