Blazing Bottles

Funny man Mel Brooks is as serious about wine as he is about his movies

By Jeff Morgan

(Originally Published in Wine Spectator August 31, 1995)

Mel Brooks transformed the traditionally ale-swigging Friar Tuck into Rabbi Tuckman, purveyor of sacramental wines, for his 1993 movie, "Robin Hood: Men in Tights." It was not accidental. The filmmaker-comedian extraordinaire has had a serious relationship with wine since 1968, when he was shooting his Oscar-winning feature, "The Producers," with Gene Wilder.

"I was 39 or 40 at the time," Brooks recalls, "and Gene opened a bottle of Nuits-St.-Georges. I liked it," he says, with a nod to understatement. Until that moment, Brooks' experience had been limited to Manischewitz--the kind of wine sold by Rabbi Tuckman.

Wilder's bottle of Burgundy quickly converted Brooks to the fine wine fold. "I began drinking Burgundy about once a week," he says. His current 800-bottle cellar lived only in his imagination then, and Brooks made many of his initial wine purchases off restaurant lists when eating out. Still a cautious novice, he rarely strayed from Burgundy. "I liked Clos Vougeot, Gevrey-Chambertin and Chambolle-Musigny. But I didn't have enough money at the time for Le Musigny."

After his initial epiphany with Wilder, Brooks moved to California in 1972. It was there that he met Emile Buyse, who introduced Brooks to the passion he still pursues today, red Bordeaux. Buyse was head of international films for 20th Century Fox. The Frenchman and the Brooklyn, N.Y., native developed a close friendship, one in which the joys of the table were paramount. "In Paris, when I'd go out with Emile," Brooks says, "he'd order Bordeaux. I went nuts with Burgundy until I found Bordeaux."

Over the years Brooks has modified his dining habits. He does not eat red meat and he swears that Bordeaux is the wine that best satisfies his present dining regimen. "With chicken or fish [like salmon and tuna] red Bordeaux is perfect," he declares. "Burgundy hits you harder. You need a lamb chop to anchor it."

But don't despair, Brooks fans, that the maestro would overwhelm a delicate filet of sole with a powerful Pauillac. White wine is in his vocabulary, though he admits: "I don't drink whites much, except for German kabinetts from the Rhine and Mosel, and great white Burgundy." Brooks is particularly fond of Batard and Chassagne-Montrachet. But his opinion of Puligny-Montrachet is that "it's not worth the money."

Though money may not be an object for someone as successful as Brooks, this hasn't always been the case. Brooks' early days in Brooklyn were not easy. His father died when the filmmaker was still a boy, and the task of raising the family fell to Brooks' courageous and hard-working mother. Later, with music as his first inspiration, the young comedian started out as a drummer and began playing in regional theaters and resorts in the "borscht belt"--the Catskill Mountains resort hotels where New York entertainers still test out new material. He soon made the transition from the orchestra pit to the stage and began telling jokes.

It was in the Catskills that Brooks met Sid Caesar (who also started off as a musician--playing saxophone). In a move that catapulted Brooks into the big time, Caesar hired him to be a writer for the now classic and hilarious "Your Show of Shows," which made television history from 1950-54. It was on that creative frontier, in the company of other luminaries, like Woody Allen and Carl Reiner, that Brooks honed his writing skills. But even after winning a screenplay Oscar for his first movie, 1968's "The Producers," Brooks didn't have the financial muscle and industry power he has today.

" 'Blazing Saddles' was the financial breakthrough," says Brooks' close friend, screenwriter Ron Clark. Clark wrote the original idea for the film "Silent Movie" which he and Brooks co-wrote (the team also came up with "High Anxiety.") "But 'Blazing Saddles' almost flopped," he says. When Brooks first showed the finished film to executives at Warner Brothers, no one laughed. They stared open-mouthed at what they considered to be an unmitigated disaster and threatened not to release it.

"Mel saved the movie," Clark recalls, "by rounding up every secretary, grip and young person he could find at the studio. He then forced the big shots to come to another screening in the company of this youthful crowd.Needless to say, the young folks went through the roof." And the rest is history.

Brooks' other comedy classics include "Young Frankenstein," "History of the World, Part I" and "Spaceballs." But he has a serious side as well. He founded his own film company in 1979, called Brooksfilms. It has produced high-end heavyweight drama such as David Lynch's "The Elephant Man," "Frances," for which Jessica Lange received an Oscar nomination and "My Favorite Year," which yielded a nomination to Peter O'Toole.

Show business also permeates Brooks' personal life: His 30-year marriage is to actress Anne Bancroft. "She was appearing on the Perry Como show in New York after playing in two big Broadway hits. Mel went to see her with a friend and asked her out," explains Clark. Apparently she said yes. Since the wedding, Bancroft has occasionally found herself paired with Brooks onscreen as well as off. She played herself in "Silent Movie" and also starred in "To Be or Not To Be." She won the British Academy Award for her role in Brooksfilms' "84 Charing Cross Road," opposite Anthony Hopkins.

s an evolving wine aficionado, Brooks spent most of the 1970s investing in his palate, discovering fine wine through restaurant wine lists from California to Europe. The wines of his adopted home did not go unnoticed either. In California restaurants, he drinks California wine except when dining in a French or Italian establishment. His favorite California winery is Caymus, but he's also partial to Freemark Abbey Cabernet Sauvignon Bosche, Heitz Martha's Vineyard and Cakebread.

Brooks did not acquire his own cellar until 1980, when he bought a home with a true cellar space, something unusual in Los Angeles, and proceeded to "get into everything." "Everything" for Mel Brooks means 90 percent French. The rest comes from California, Germany and Italy. All bottle racks are bolted into deep grooves in the walls, making them earthquake-resistant. It works: Not one bottle broke in the January 1994 quake that rattled and shattered many collections in the area.

Like every collector, Brooks has some good stories to tell about certain bottles. He credits Alfred Hitchcock with making him an acolyte of Château Haut-Brion. Brooks dedicated his film, "High Anxiety," to Hitchcock. It's an homage inspired by such Hitchcock thrillers as "The Birds," "Psycho" and "Vertigo," and then run through Mel's mind. Brooks' character is stabbed in the shower with a newspaper and later rained upon by a flock of defecating pigeons before nearly falling to his death in the final, frantically absurd tower scene.

He invited Hitchcock to a pre-release screening of "High Anxiety" and when it was over, the master of suspense walked out without a word. Brooks remembers thinking, "Oh, boy, he hates it." But soon after, Hitchcock sent Brooks a case of 1961 Haut-Brion in magnum with a note that said, "A small token of my pleasure, have no anxiety about this."

Brooks' cellar contains a number of gems like a 1945 Lafite-Rothschild which has its lettering embossed on the bottle glass. Lying nearby is a 1945 Mouton-Rothschild labeled "l'Année de la Victoire." His oldest bottle is a 1934 Le Chambertin that he guesses is undrinkable. "Carl Reiner gave it to me for a birthday present. He didn't know what it was." The two comedians have been close since the 1950s and their days together on "Your Show of Shows."

When Reiner offered his friend the great Burgundy, Brooks couldn't help noticing Reiner owned a 1961 Lafite-Rothschild as well. It had obviously been a gift from another of Reiner's friends. "I'll buy it from you for a dollar," Brooks told his innocent colleague, and the deal was done. But the wine maven doesn't really have a heart of stone. "When I drink it, Carl will share it with me," he says repentantly.

Asked what his favorite wine of all time has been, Brooks unhesitatingly responds, "1979 Cheval-Blanc, from St.-Emilion." He drank it in Paris at Restaurant Lasserre, where it was offered to him by the restaurant's owner. "I had it with foie gras chaud, some-thing that should kill a Jew," he says.

Brooks may have reason for the particularly soft spot in his heart held by the French wine region of St.-Emilion. When on tour there with "Spaceballs" a decade ago, he was made a Chevalier in the Sacred Order of St.-Emilion. "I got the robe and everything, and I can sleep in any of the châteaus there," Brooks says gleefully.

But Mel Brooks doesn't take his membership in the organization lightly. He is thoroughly committed to wine as a lifestyle and drinks it with every dinner. And he knows the territory, commenting with great fluency about the wine regions he loves and the wines made there. As we embarked upon a discussion of blending differences and varietal variations in Bordeaux, I asked Brooks where he had acquired his wine wisdom. "I read Wine Spectator," came the response.

With a grueling schedule, Brooks dines out frequently. In Los Angeles, he is known to bring his own wines to dinner at restaurants where he is a regular customer. "If they don't carry 1975 Figeac, I bring a magnum and let the owner have a glass. They don't argue with 1970 Pétrus either. I've got to beat their list."

On location, dinner can get dicey for someone used to drinking well. "Blazing Saddles" was shot in Lancaster and Palmdale, in the desert outside of Los Angeles. "The best wines around were Thunderbird," Brooks says. "I traveled with an assorted case from my cellar. But if a restaurant had a decent list, I wouldn't embarrass them."

However, he once got a jolt of cellar humility, at La Tour d'Argent in Paris. He had left his wines home on this occasion, for the restaurant, which has held a Wine Spectator Grand Award since 1986, is known to have one of the most extensive collections in France. But when owner Claude Terrail offered him a personal tour, Brooks was not prepared for the enormity of what he saw. "There was a mile of wine cellar," he remembers, still awestruck. "It took up an acre underground." The filmmaker was humbled, but also inspired. "What a thrilling night." He spotted a lot of 19th century wines and sampled a few old Armagnacs, one of which was said to have come from Napoleon's cellar. It was a heady mix.

"I got drunk before I drank them," he says.

Brooks is currently working on a new movie, "Dracula, Dead and Liking It," to be released at the end of the year. Naturally, the leading man drinks only red blood. But in one sequence, he has a "daymare" that he's drinking red wine and loving it. It's vintage Mel Brooks, of course.