50 Wines In 50 States: Kurt Russell Starring In The Selection Of The Clones

Columnist Dan Dunn is visiting wineries across the country for his new book project, and spilling his guts along the way. This is the second installment. Read part one.

Over the past 23 days I've driven in excess of 4,000 miles through California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, which is where I'm writing this dispatch. Carbondale, Colorado, to be precise. I'll be filling you in on all of this in due time, but first let's roll back to Santa Barbara and one of the more memorable experiences I've had researching the book.

Santa Barbara County seemed as good a place as any to begin my nationwide oenophilic odyssey. For starters, it's the closest winemaking region to where I live. Lived. Past tense. I live in nowhere now. Gotta get used to that one.

Besides proximity to the place I don't live, I began my journey in Santa Barbara County because I know a guy who makes wine thereabouts. And that guy happens to be a famous actor named Kurt Russell. As in Escape from New York. Big Trouble In Little China, Captain Ron. Overboard. Turns out Snake Plissken makes a damn good pinot noir. I first tried it in 2012 when I interviewed Kurt on my radio show, Dan Dunn's Happy Hour. Anyway, the two of us kept in touch, and I figured if anyone could bridge the gap between me and wine it would be the star of Death Proof.

Located in an industrial park known as the Lompoc Wine Ghetto, the barrel room for Ampelos Cellars Winery sits inside a large steel hangar with harsh fluorescent lighting, a cold concrete floor and a single bathroom that's missing a door. Picture, if you will, one of those impossibly charming, fairytale-like medieval chateaux that Bordeaux's right bank is so famous for. Now picture the exact opposite of that. The Ampelos Cellars barrel room feels like something Andy Warhol would have dreamed up to torture Robin Leach, and it is as utilitarian a space as you're likely to encounter at any winemaking operation anywhere in the world (the ones in West Virginia at least have doors on their terlits). And this is where Kurt Russell hangs out for fun. And I'm 25 minutes late.

"There he is, right on time!" Russell thunders as he materializes from behind a barrel row with a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses. "My man!" Reflexively, I glance behind me. Nobody there. He's talking to me. Enthusiastically. I'm halfway between crapping my pants in fear and having the biggest brogasm of my life.

Kurt Russell is 63, but he looks my age. (Unless, of course, it's me that looks his age. Did I mention that it's been a rough year?) Dude's wearing jeans, a flannel shirt and a weathered Carhartt jacket. He's rugged. Like actually rugged, not ersatz Hollywood well-lit rugged (though the leading man mug doesn't hurt).

I extend my hand and barely get "great to see you again, Kurt," out before he brushes it aside, going in for a hearty bro-hug. Now I was really flustered. Jesus, he even smells like a leading man.

After half a bottle of pinot, we get down to business. The first thing Kurt tells me about winemaking is that the most important part of it is selecting the right clones. Though I have only just begun my educational tour, I'm aware that a clone is a grapevine replicated from a particular "mother vine." Basically, a twig of a vine with a bud is cut from the mother vine and then either planted directly into the ground to sprout its own roots or, more commonly, grafted onto a specific rootstock. The newly planted, or grafted, vine is an exact replica of the mother vine. This cloning of vines accounts for a great deal of the spread of wine varietals from one place to another — mainly, from the Old World to everyplace else. No wonder the French and Italians are so pissy towards the rest of us. Graft pisses everyone off.

Individual grape varietals — Pinot Noir, for instance — are prized for particular attributes, such as crop size, specific aromas or tannins, time of ripening, low or high sugars or acidity and sensibility to disease. You might think of them as the different colors of paint that make up a work of art, or the various singing styles that form a choir. Or, in the case of shitty wine, the films that constitute Adam's Sandler's oeuvre.

I have to admit, I was pretty pumped that of all the elements of viticulture Kurt could have chosen to discuss, most of which I knew little to nothing about, he lead with something that I actually understood and could talk semi-intelligently about. The key word in that last sentence being could. Of course, I decided to lead with this...

"I read somewhere that you turned down the role of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Is that true?"

Kurt looks up from the beaker in which he was mixing wine made from various clones. A 777 with a 115, if memory serves. Clones, like prison inmates and race cars, have numbers instead of names.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I said I read somewhere that you turned down the role of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Is that true?"

"Star Wars?"

"Yeah. You mentioned clones and that made me think about the Clone Wars. And then I remembered the thing I read somewhere about you turning down the part of Luke Skywalker back in the '70s."

Kurt just stares at me, the expression on his face a mixture of bemusement and what looked an awful lot like pity.

"I'm kind of a Star Wars geek," I add sheepishly.

With his gaze still fixed on me, he picks up his glass and takes a long deliberative sip of Gogi, the delightful Pinot Noir that bears his childhood nickname. Instinctively, I follow suit. In my defense, it was just after 11 a.m., and we were on our second bottle. Either I was going to have to learn how to pace myself on this trip, or I might very well wind up in rehab before I got out of California.

Finally he speaks. "When do you have to deliver this book to the publisher?"

"May."

"Hmm," he says. That's it, just "hmm." He refills our glasses and goes back to mixing clones. Without saying anything at all, Snake Plissken has just told me I didn't have a chance in the world among the wine-swilling elite. That's when I decid it best to hold any further questions I'd had about some of his most iconic roles, like who had better hair, Tango or Cash? Did Captain Ron actually hold a license to operate a vessel for hire in the Caribbean or was he brazenly violating international maritime law? Will there be a 3,000 Miles to Graceland 2? If so, why?

As he finished with mixing his clones, the Cash half of Tango and Cash pours the contents of the beaker into a glass and hands it to me. "Here, try this," he says. It's the blend for Jillybean, a wine he named after one of his sisters.

"That's amazing," I say, and he flashes that movie star smile of his.

"I was never offered a role in Star Wars," he said.

"Hmm," I reply, taking a big swig of the Jillybean. I had assimilated my first actionable piece of wisdom. When you're uncomfortable, just say "Hmm."

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