Playboy turns wine Aficionado

Before I get down to business, let me get this off my chest. For the past 30 minutes, I have been giggling away over the text messages my better half has been sending from a showing of Himesh Reshammiya’s Karzzzz. She wasn’t complaining about his nasal excesses—she’s reconciled to that famously infamous voice. She was merely shocked to find a brewery being shown in a South African vineyard, and to see Kenya being projected as a wine-producing country. I am all for Bollywood promoting the virtues of wine—Priyanka drinks a lot of it in Tarun Mansukhani’s Dostana—but why can’t they get their facts right?

Bollywood producers aren’t the only ones climbing on to the wine bandwagon— a slew of celebrities, from Francis Ford Coppola to Arnold Palmer, have made serious forays into the wine business already. But the news that tickled me was that of a super-premium wine line endorsed by Playboy, the original skin magazine.

The labels are fun. Imagine describing a wine as blonde, blue-eyed and busty! It’s better than evoking the glories of obscure names that sommeliers drop when they wish to con unsuspecting customers. Playboy models were once uniformly blonde and blue-eyed, because America hadn’t yet grown up to accept the African-American or Latina beauties. Now, try to guess the kind of wine that would be called “smoky, sultry, seductive, sinewy”, the Naomi Campbell of wines. I suspect the Gaja Barbaresco 1997.

The labels celebrate the Playmates of the 1960s, so there’s no call for sitting there with your tongue hanging out. In those days, Playmates wouldn’t be caught dead even in an itsy-bitsy polka dot bikini. The Cabernet Sauvignon—a 2005 Money Road Ranch from Gariulo Vineyards, Napa Valley, an iconic label from a family that handcrafts 3,500 cases of wine a year—has the magazine’s July 1966 cover, “one of the most adventurous covers of the decade.” It makes you wonder what the Swinging Sixties were all about— with such extreme deprivation, it had no option but to embrace free love and nuclear disarmament.

The 2003 Dollarhide Cabernet Sauvignon from Sonoma Valley, also in California, features the iconic Playboy bunny image, dating back to March 1967. The Playmate had her shoulders bare, which was revolutionary for the age, but she’s hardly pushing the boundaries today.

It was the 2006 Janzen Cabernet Sauvignon that tickled me the most. The wine, another of the great yet discreet names to emerge from Napa Valley, is described as one with “finesse, depth, complexity.” The Playmate on the label, of February 1962 vintage, believe it or not, is fully-clothed— the only skin she shows is what little a negligee’s falling noodlestrap can reveal. Talking of depth, her cleavage, indeed, has it, but it leaves everything to the imagination.

The collection’s fourth wine—a 2003 Schug ‘Heritage Reserve’ Cabernet Sauvignon, another one from the Sonoma Valley—has this blonde flaunting her derriere in a body-hugging pant suit. The only thing shocking about it is the shade of red—it reminded me of Kingfisher Airlines. These wines—only 550 bottles per label—will retail in the US for $90 to $380. The other option is to pay $1,567 for the set and get a magazine subscription for free. I can’t see many people going for the second option. Unless they want to read the articles.