Grapevine: A World-famous Restaurant is the Victim of Holiday Foul Play
My wife and I have been fortunate over the years to enjoy high-end travel destinations and the sophisticated restaurants that thrive nearby. Several of these destinations and restaurants have been in the wine regions of several countries, notably France, Italy and the United States.
Whenever we see one of these destinations in the news, it rekindles our fond memories of the unique times we enjoyed. But every so often, these destinations are in the news for less than glorious reasons. So it was last week. The French Laundry restaurant, deep in the heartland of Napa Valley, was burglarized.
We were patrons when the owner and chef, Thomas Keller, first opened the restaurant in 1994 to critical acclaim for his (at the time) innovative approach to menu offerings, eclectic ingredients and groundbreaking food preparation. The restaurant has earned the coveted top ranking from the dining review arm of Michelin (three stars, one of only nine restaurants so acclaimed in the United States).
We returned to The French Laundry several years later for a similarly glorious meal and wondrous wine pairing, but recently its reputation has influenced its price: $295 for a nine-course chef’s tasting dinner, before considering the world famous, and equally expensive, wine list offerings.
With these memories now brought to the forefront of my consciousness as I read last week’s news, I sought out the details of the burglary more closely.
Keller and his staff served their last meal on Christmas Eve, before a scheduled renovation and expansion of the restaurant, and “had just settled down for a long winter’s nap,” to blatantly use a line from the Clement C. Moore poem I recently read to our young family members.
The vacant restaurant was broken into on Christmas Day.
How did they enter? The thief (or thieves) clumsily smashed open the door to the wine cellar — with a hammer, splintering the lock and the door. “They spoke not a word but went straight to their work. And filled all their stockings.”
What did they flee with? Precious wine, valued at over $300,000, according to the Los Angeles Times. And not the first wines they could grab, but specific bottles from specific high-end wineries. These facts had me thinking it was an inside job perpetrated by one or more knowledgeable burglars.
However, when I saw the story, my first thought was Whoa! What a collection.” This surely ranks with the most expansive and expensive restaurant cellars in the United States. Even an average price of $300 per bottle for the higher-end wines would equate to about 1,000 bottles – and this would represent just a portion of the cellar contents. Reading further, Keller confirmed that only 76 bottles were missing. That is an average value of nearly $4,000 per bottle.
Additional details began to emerge.
The list of stolen bottles read like a Who’s Who of high-end wines, many of which are rarely on a restaurant wine list, unless you’re a three-star Michelin restaurant serving $295 dinners. And did I mention that this expansive and expensive cellar caters to a capacity of only 62 seats at The French Laundry? This is a striking example of rare, quality wines at a rare, quality restaurant.
The list of individual wines is dominated by the most expensive bottles in the world: Domaine de la Romanée-Conti from the French Burgundy region (60 bottles), the most valued bottle of which is estimated to be worth $15,000. The American cult wine Screaming Eagle is also represented on this now infamous list, as are several bottles of Dom Pérignon, a French cult Champagne.
Here the term “valued at” refers to retail pricing. The prices on a restaurant wine list are typically marked up two to three times over retail (and for rare wines even higher), which if this is the case for The French Laundry list, would catapult this theft to grand proportions.
Certainly Keller will recover from this tragedy – and most likely more quickly than I.
Nick Antonaccio is a 35-year Pleasantville resident. For over 15 years he has conducted wine tastings and lectures. He also offers personalized wine tastings and wine travel services. Nick’s credo: continuous experimenting results in instinctive behavior. You can reach him at nantonaccio@theexaminernews.com or on Twitter @sharingwine.
