Jay Mcinerney Words by Dan Keeling Photos by Alex Lockett
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Mister Manhattan Noble Rot meets the ‘hedonist in the Words by Dan Keeling cellar’ Jay McInerney Photos by Alex Lockett There’s a theory that when someone becomes seriously brand of amorality and excess, he writes prose as famous their image is indelibly frozen on to the collective precise as a fine Burgundy, another of his passions consciousness. For Jay McInerney – novelist, wine writer and one about which he has written extensively. If and avid bon vivant – this happened sometime during fame first took him inside ’80s Manhattan’s art and 1984 when his zeitgeist-defining debut Bright Lights, music scenes, his wine-writing career has broadened Big City and hedonistic antics established his reputation his cross-section of friends and potential subject as the hard-partying bad boy of modern American matter, from real-estate developers and political literature. Innovatively written in the second person, this journalists to astronomers and the notorious, now dark-humoured tale of 20-something disillusionment in incarcerated, wine-forger Rudy Kurniawan. “I thought Manhattan has a degree of self-reference about it as its Rudy would be interesting to write about, but he was protagonist stumbles from one vacuous liaison to nervous about being scrutinised. Happily, I never fell another, and gets fired from his job as a fact-checker for under the spell,” says McInerney. The New Yorker (as McInerney once was). So enduring is We meet for Cornas and pizza at a restaurant the novel’s shadow that less-assured authors might rue that boasts one of Manhattan’s most sainted wine ever having written it. But no one-hit wonder, McInerney lists, Pasquale Jones, a short walk from the Greenwich went on to publish Story of My Life (1988), which to my Village apartment McInerney shares with his fourth mind is even better, written from the perspective of its wife, publishing heiress Anne Hearst. Youthful and 21-year-old anti-heroine, whose narcissistic lifestyle unjaded, he is convivial company: I imagine him, in seems prophetic of social-media culture. another life, sat at the bar of a Galway pub, telling Born in 1955 in Hartford, Connecticut, stories in the accent his ancestral surname suggests. McInerney grew up following his father’s marketing Although I’m an outsider 20 years his junior, I relate to job around the USA, before settling down at high his fascination with New York, and how it has changed, school in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His passion for whether through themes such as middle-class families literature burgeoning, he moved to Manhattan in the struggling to raise kids there (as in his most recent late 1970s, where almost all of his novels are set, and novel, Bright, Precious Days), or his depictions of its studied writing under Raymond Carver at Syracuse often outrageous wine collectors’ scene. Some say University. A master of characterisation, and an McInerney accords ’80s Manhattan a semi-mythical unflinching observer of the Big Apple’s particular status; I say, has anywhere ever sounded so much fun? 36 Noble Rot 37 Noble Rot Dan Keeling Does writing fiction and non-fiction have DK You once wrote that Condrieu was your favourite much in common? white wine. Is that still true? Jay McInerney I’ve always tried to write about wine JM For certain purposes. I find it a decadent pleasure, as a novelist, from the point of view of talking about the I really do. I don’t think it makes a great apéritif, but people, but also about the aesthetics of wine tasting. sometimes I think of it as winter wine. It’s rich, heavier I try to imagine what a wine tastes like not from a strictly and breaks all the rules of fine white wine. It’s low in literal point of view, but from a more metaphorical, acid. It doesn’t age very well, yet I just find it so analogical point of view. When I was writing early on decadently pleasurable. My favourite is André Perret about California Chardonnays, it was the heyday of ‘Coteau de Chéry’. Some Condrieus can get a little too Pamela Anderson. So when you say that a Marcassin heavy and rich. You know, La Doriane by Guigal is Chardonnay reminds you of Pamela Anderson and sometimes a little bit too much – like stripper’s tits. How a Chablis of Kate Moss – remember, this was 1996 – much flesh do you need? [Laughs] people say, “Oh, I think I know what he means.” I’ve never been one for technical training – I don’t DK How do you feel about the rise of natural wines? really go in for talking about brix and malolactic fermentation or literal flavour descriptors. It’s like JM I like natural wines if they’re good. If you go over to Robert Parker’s notes about Côte-Rôtie – you’ve got Brooklyn, it’s a whole different world in terms of the wine raspberries and bacon and violets, and I sort of lists; instead of revering Coche-Dury, people talk about know what he means, but at the same time, it sounds Ganevat as the ultimate white wine. I recently had a nonsensical to the average person. So, I look for more 2000 Thierry Allemand Cornas ‘Sans Soufre’, which is figurative ways to write about wine as a storyteller, unquestionably natural, and it was one of the best wines and as an inventor of similes and metaphors. I’ve had this year. That said, I think an awful lot of what appears on some natural wine lists is unpleasant. There’s DK Did Parker take himself too seriously? a sort of bastion of natural wine in Manhattan right now called Frenchette – it’s a very fashionable and JM Yeah, but he had to. I think Parker created controversial restaurant in Tribeca that has 100% a revolution, and all revolutionaries are serious. natural wine on its list and a kind of ‘our way or the high For me, I never could’ve learned so much about way’ attitude that upsets a lot of people. First of all wine so quickly if it weren’t for Parker – he cut through because they’re dogmatic, and they won’t let you bring so much bullshit. Whether you loved him or hated him, wine. And they serve it in these stubby glasses, which I he was the most important force in all of wine. I mean, find kind of disrespectful [see ‘Glass Half Full’, p11, for the Bordelais changed their style of winemaking more]. I’m able to navigate that list because there are a because of him – not necessarily for the better, but few makers I like on it, whereas I want to drink 80% of a they did. They pandered to his palate, and so did the list like the one here at Pasquale Jones. Châteauneuf-du-Pape producers; all of those ‘special cuvées’, that was all Parker’s doing. I’m an DK Is Manhattan slowly turning into a big shopping admirer of Parker, but it was a godsend to Burgundy mall where only the few can afford to live? that Faiveley sued him and kicked him out of Burgundy or he’d have exerted a Parker-ising effect there, too. JM That's a good question. I think it’s still setting the Burgundy is everything that Parker isn’t, but if he standards at the high end, but Manhattan real estate hadn’t withdrawn from covering it, it would be was crazy until recently, and driving young people and different today. the middle classes out toward the Boroughs. There’s actually a downturn right now in real estate, and I’m DK Do you think the rise of celebrity sommeliers, interested to see how that shakes out in the long run. which happened much more in America than in Britain, But a lot of the innovation has gone to Brooklyn. On the is related to the demise of Parker’s influence? other hand, it’s interesting that the best restaurant to open in Brooklyn in recent years is called Brooklyn JM Yes, and interestingly enough, the sommelier palate Fare. It recently moved into Manhattan, so maybe that’s tends to be the exact opposite of his – high acid, more an indication that if you have a three-star restaurant, balance, lower-alcohol wines. It’s really interesting the Manhattan is still the ideal. I made my career writing way that all happened as Parker was receding, and about Manhattan, and I don’t want to write it off, but it’s suddenly you have young sommeliers setting the tone certainly much more expensive and less diverse than it for wine fashion. I can’t say enough good things about was when I arrived. Of course, when I first came here, New York sommelier culture. It’s just incredible: 15 years it was in danger of going down the toilet with all the ago, the idea of a little restaurant like this having two crime and the corruption and the filth. It was really Top: Interview juice sommeliers on the floor would be mind-boggling, and dicey. In 1979/1980, it was kind of a toss of the coin Left to right: Noble Rot's Mark Andrew, now it’s kind of the rule. whether it was just going to keep going downhill and Dan Keeling and Jay McInerney, Pasquale Jones, NYC, 4 October 2019 38 Noble Rot 39 Noble Rot Jay McInerney, Little Italy, NYC, 4 October 2019 the ’80s were the golden period. It was the best of times and the worst of times become a place that people fled from.