Jay McInerney, mellowing like a fine wine in his home study
It was the 1984 coming-of-age-in-New-York novel Bright Lights, Big City that put Jay McInerney on the literary map, but over the past several decades, the author has matured beyond those halcyon days into a prolific oenophile. His exploration of wine has been well documented in magazine and newspaper columns; now they’ve been compiled into an around-the-globe tasting tour titled The Juice: Vinous Veritas. “Over the years, I’ve become more knowledgeable, whether I planned to or not,” say McInerney of his ever-evolving wine expertise. “I think a lot of times people like teachers who aren’t that far ahead of them in the textbook. Also, as a novelist, I thought most wine writing was pretty boring and it would be fun to bring in new metaphors and similes, not comparing wines to flowers all the time.”
McInerney’s wine writing is decidedly more rock ’n’ roll: He compares a Chardonnay to “Eric Clapton’s acoustic version of ‘Layla,’” and varietals from the Coulée de Serrant to Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil or Ava Gardner in The Barefoot Contessa. And while The Juice, McInerney’s third wine book after A Hedonist in the Cellar and Bacchus and Me, has passages devoted to winemaking meccas such as the Rhone Valley and Napa, a number of chapters also cover local vineyards, including Channing Daughters and Bedell Cellars. “I think Long Island is getting better and better,” says McInerney of our North and South Fork wines. “It’s just a question of experience—the French have had a couple thousand years to figure out where the best sites are and what the best grapes are for their soils. Long Island has only been at it for about 30, 35 years.”
Citing the area around Cutchogue as “the sweet spot” for winemaking, McInerney also gives credit to the area’s popular rosés. Yet, if the author had it his way, the home he shares in Bridgehampton with his wife, Anne Hearst McInerney, and their blended family of four children, would also produce a few bottles as well. “My life is pretty good. I can’t complain, but once in awhile I think I’d love to have a great winery,” he says, weighing his options from planting vines at their Hamptons home to purchasing a fantasy vineyard such as Château de Beaucastel in Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
This past winter, the author spent several months in Bridgehampton working on a new novel he aims to finish this summer. “I want to write something better than I’ve ever written before and that has a chance of interesting people now and maybe even 25 or 50 years from now,” says McInerney. “Sometimes I think it would be nice if my most successful novel were my fifth or sixth, but on the other hand, Bright Lights has given me a great career and allowed me to keep writing instead of giving up, instead of becoming an editor or going to law school.”
Whereas Bright Lights portrayed a grittier New York and a much wilder narrator, McInerney’s social schedule no longer includes raucous evenings at The Odeon. These days he prefers dinner parties at home as well as the philanthropic events with his wife, such as the past galas they hosted for Best Buddies, the Alzheimer’s Foundation, and the Princess Grace Foundation. “I think my preoccupations have shifted a little and my relationship with the city has changed,” says McInerney. “I eventually got married and had kids, and that changes the way you look at the world. I really do love city life, but city life and writing fiction are not always compatible. I love to just hole up in the Hamptons and write. Now I’m looking forward to the first swim. I’m a fly fisherman and am looking forward to my first striped bass. And I’m looking forward to our first dinner party; the dinner party is a great Hamptons institution.”
