Remember the film star Fred MacMurray? Of course you don't. You're too young for that. Or maybe you aren't? He was brilliant in 1944's Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder, and went on to the more memorable, bittersweet 1960 Wilder comedy The Apartment, with Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon. Playing against the type of that Apartment role, he became the warm-hearted dad in the long-running 1960s TV series My Three Sons.
But I digress. MacMurray had a cattle-and-crop ranch in northern California, a gorgeous site not open to visitors. The actor, who died in 1991 before vines were planted on the estate, could not have envisioned that the area would become the wine paradise it is now. So this is not a "celebrity wine" in today's sense. But it's probably just as good at a lot of stuff that will be poured at many an Oscar-night bash in Los Angeles next month.
Medium-bodied, it's silky and ripe, with jammy berries richly infused with lavender, spicy characters and licorice. A fine combination of generous New World fruit and Old World savoury nuances.