College Prez Duels Critics Over Wine Cellar
It was the cellar that finally pushed them over the edge.
Robert Breuder wasn't looking to stir up a wine-related controversy. But the president of Harper College, in Chicago's northwest suburbs, has been in hot water ever since he floated a plan to devote $5.5 million of a $125 million bond referendum to improve the two-year community college's culinary arts program, which includes a restaurant open to the public.
Part of that plan  which was initially defeated, but passed at a revised level of $88.8 million last year  involved building a small space for use as a wine cellar. It was, according to Breuder, who has been at Harper since 1998, a $1,000 expenditure that was inflated by critics to $9 million.
"It was a closet," said Breuder. "But it became a lighting rod."
Breuder, who has spent the past three years wrestling with community critics, as well as with the Harper faculty, tries to minimize the controversy. But it's evident that he feels Harper missed an opportunity on this one.
Breuder came to Harper after 17 years as president of the Williamsport Area Community College in Pennsylvania (which has been renamed the Pennsylvania College of Technology). In the process of expanding Williamsport from a two-year to a four-year institution, Breuder took a significant hand in the development of the wine cellar at the school's teaching restaurant, Le Jeune Chef. It was a successful undertaking: Le Jeune Chef earned a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for its wine list in the early 1990s and moved up to Best of Award of Excellence status in 1995.
"We created a great program in Pennsylvania," said Breuder, "and I wanted to do the same at Harper. But the more you defend what you're after and try to get cerebral, the worse it gets."
Although the Harper Board of Trustees recently extended his contract an additional year, through 2005, Breuder continues to duke it out with the faculty senate, in what he described as a "labor-management issue." He recently endured a no-confidence vote related to several official grievances (none specifically related to the wine cellar).
"The faculty senate's biggest concern is with Dr. Breuder's misunderstanding of the college mission," explained Patrick Beach, Harper's program coordinator for hospitality management programs, of which the culinary arts program is a part. "The board and Dr. Breuder have become more market-driven in their reallocation of initiatives, and based on 35 years of history with the community, the faculty finds that to be shortsighted and inappropriate."
The battle over the culinary arts facilities hasn't dulled Brueder's confident manner  he never sounds as if he wasn't right all along  but it has cast a shadow over his enthusiasm for wine. He has been teaching a course in wine appreciation at the college. But his critics have cited the course as evidence that his personal passions have a way of turning into professional extravagances, and he suggested that he might not continue running it.
"I'm getting so much grief that I'm not sure I want to do it anymore," he said. "They were looking to find my Achilles heel, so they targeted that."
According to the Chicago Tribune, Brueder's critics maintain that he has used college funds to attend the Monterey Food and Wine Festival to the tune of $2,258 and entertain guests at upscale restaurants such as Spago.
Breuder counters that Harper disperses professional development accounts of $2,500 a year for him and for other administrators to use at their discretion. As far as the wine-appreciation course is concerned, he claims that he receives no compensation for teaching and uses the students' fees only to buy wine for the course tastings. He cites the fact that the course is usually oversubscribed as evidence that there's ample community interest in the culinary arts  enough to justify allotting some bond money to improve the culinary program's physical facilities, which are now housed in a basement.
"Unfortunately, they got hung up on the wine thing," he said. "So the culinary program expansion is out."
To Breuder, that's a mistake. He described the culinary arts as a "tremendous career field," complained that Harper's facilities are "not very good," and observed that there's so much demand for culinary professionals that most programs "can't turn 'em out fast enough."
Beach agrees that the culinary arts program got caught up in an unfortunate crossfire. "Dr. Breuder is a champion of career programs such as mine, and I want to support that." He matter-of-factly admits that he is "facility constrained" from admitting more than 150 to 170 students to the program in an academic year.
Breuder certainly has no fear of spending money, but it's possible that his opponents have mischaracterized his allegedly profligate ways. The Chicago Tribune reported that, "Over four years, he has spent $30,000 for 32 out-of-town trips and $26,000 for 247 meetings at meals." That comes to an average of less than $1,000 per trip and $105 per meal.
Beach offered a slightly wider perspective. "Dr. Breuder came into a conservative community where there was a lot more oversight than what he was used to."
Breuder tartly characterized that appetite for oversight as "myopia" and spared no ire for the local tax-watch group that "seized on the culinary center as an extravagance" when scrutinizing the bond referendum. But he has given up, for now, on pushing the culinary-arts expansion  and its wine cellar  any harder.
Still, the cellar may someday be back in the picture. Just ask one of Breuder's critics.
"The college and Dr. Breuder were inappropriately beaten up on that," said Beach. "But I would like to think that in the future, students will be able to pour a glass of wine with the dinners we serve."
Latour and Cheval-Blanc Push Their 2000 Bordeaux Prices Even Higher
Prices for young Bordeaux wines continued to skyrocket past all the old records today. Chateau  Latour pushed the futures price for its 2000 vintage up to 250 euros ($213) per bottle to the trade. This was the fourth release, or quatrieme tranche, for the Pauillac first-growth since June 5, when the estate released its wine at 120 euros ($102) a bottle.
Chateau  Cheval-Blanc, one of the two premier grand cru classe A estates in Bordeaux's St.-Emilion appellation, responded by increasing its futures, or en primeur, price to 240 euros ($205) per bottle. This was the second offering from Cheval-Blanc, which had released about 30 percent of its 2000 wine for 160 euros ($138) last week.
The first-growth chateaus  Latour, Margaux, Lafite Rothschild, Mouton-Rothschild and Haut-Brion  offered their third release at 200 euros ($172) last week. Global demand for the top wines of the 2000 vintage might lead the other four chateaus to match Latour's price.
Selling wines as futures, or en primeur, means that the wines are traded while they are still aging in barrel in the cellars of their respective Chateau's. The release prices are those set for wine merchants, or negociants, in Bordeaux, who then add on their margins and resell at higher prices to clients around the world. The importers, distributors and retailers also add on their own margins, so that the final retail prices for the consumer could be as much as 225 percent to 250 percent higher than the initial prices from the Chateau's.
The Chateaus' policy of releasing their wines in several tranches has caused a frenzy in the market, according to some U.S. buyers. "There is a feeling that if you don't buy now you will pay $50 to $100 more next week," said John Fox of Premier Cru, a retail store and mail-order business in northern California. "We thought the prices they were asking for first-growths would lead to resistance. Some people are bowing out, but there is still very strong demand."
Three Top Napa Valley Chefs Begin New Ventures
Napa Valley's restaurant scene is heating up as well-known chefs Michael Chiarello, Cindy Pawlcyn and Todd Humphries, along with restaurateur and designer Pat Kuleto, take on new projects.
Michael Chiarello has left Tra Vigne, after 15 years as chef and co-owner of the St. Helena restaurant that he helped found. His protege, Carmen Quagliata, has stepped in as executive chef of the Italian restaurant.
"Michael Chiarello's Napa," a new PBS cooking and lifestyle program, launches this fall, and "Napa Stories," his new book profiling leading Napa Valley vintners, is set for release later this year. Chiarello is also a partner in Consorzio, a line of gourmet food products, such as lavender honey and infused olive oil.
Todd Humphries has left his position as executive chef of the Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America's campus in St. Helena. The former chef at Campton Place in San Francisco, Humphries is now a partner in restaurateur and designer Pat Kuleto's latest venture.
Kuleto, after shopping for a location in Napa and Sonoma counties for years, is now hard at work on Martini House in St. Helena. Known for such restaurants as Boulevard, Farallon and Jardinire in San Francisco, Kuleto is transforming a modest Craftsman bungalow that was formerly known as Spring Street restaurant. The new 180-seat dining spot is set to open in early October.
"We're calling the food 'Wild Napa Cuisine,'" said Kuleto. The menu, created by Humphries, takes inspiration from the holiday and harvest meals typically served at Napa Valley wineries.
While the restaurant will indeed serve martinis, Kuleto said it's named for Walter Martini, a former opera singer who sold bootleg wine from the cellar during Prohibition.
Kuleto is expanding the bungalow, enclosing the porch and adding a dramatic staircase in the center of the house, which will lead to a cellar wine-bar. The wine bar and restaurant list will feature 600 wines from around the world, many available by the glass. The restaurant design is inspired by Napa history, with decor that includes antique winepresses and light fixtures made from Wappo Indian baskets.
Chef Cindy Pawlcyn, owner of the classic Napa Valley eatery Mustards Grill, has just opened Miramonte restaurant in St. Helena. After a quick $1.5 million retrofit of the old Showley's at Miramonte restaurant, next door to Terra, Pawlcyn is drawing locals and tourists alike with upscale home-cooking influenced by the food of North, South and Central America.
"I can do really fancy food, but I wanted it to be a real neighborhood joint," said Pawlcyn, who hired Pablo Jacinto as chef de cuisine at Miramonte. The menu regularly includes the likes of fish tostadas, duck burger with shiitake mushroom mustard and variations on seviche. The wine list features selections from California, as well as South America and Mexico.
Meanwhile, Pawlcyn, an original partner in Real Restaurants group, has quietly severed ties with the company, which owns Northern California restaurants such as Fog City Diner, Betelnut and Tra Vigne. Pawlcyn is now the owner of Mustards Grill, which she opened in Yountville with Real Restaurants in the early 1980s, and remains the executive chef there.
Bordeaux's Michel Rolland Releases Argentinean Wines
Well-known Bordeaux enologist Michel Rolland, who consults for wineries all over the globe, has released the first wines from his Argentinean project, Bodega San Pedro de Yacochuya.
Rolland, known for opulent, modern-style wines such as those from his Pomerol property Chateau  Le Bon-Pasteur, currently consults for Chile's Casa Lapostolle and Argentina's Etchart winery. His work with Etchart brought him into contact with the Cafayate area of Argentina, north of the country's better-known Mendoza wine region. The Etchart family owns a 24-acre vineyard there planted exclusively to Malbec vines, which are an average 60 years old.
Rolland is using those grapes to produce two wines, starting with the 1999 vintage. The main San Pedro de Yacochuya wine, of which there are about 1,665 cases, is being sold through Bordeaux merchants. No American importer has yet been announced for the wine, but Wine Spectator will review it if it becomes available in the Unites States. A second wine, of which there were 1,250 cases made, will be available only in Argentina.
Wine Storage
How wine is stored is essential for proper aging. The consensus among wine experts is that the best temperature for storing wine is between 55 degrees  and 57 degrees F. Lower temperature can slow development while higher temperatures age wine prematurely. Improper humidity levels can also adversely affect stored wine. Too much humidity promotes mold to develop and damages labels, and lower humidity levels cause corks to dry out.
This is why Marin Wine Vaults' climate controlled vaults were built to maintain a steady 55-57 degrees  to create optimal conditions for proper wine maturation. Humidity control systems also assist in maintaining that correct wine storage environment. The temperature and humidity systems are controlled and monitored by our on-site staff. And because light can damage wine, every vault features a solid door. This integrated system helps preserve the quality of your fine wine.
Should a power failure ever occur, there's even a back-up generator in place that will provide supplemental power to keep our systems operating. On-call technicians, if ever needed, are available 24/7 to keep all systems running at top efficiency. Since our vaults were designed by professional wine consultants, you can be confident that your wine is stored properly and safely.
For more information or to make a reservation, you can call us at 415.460-1800.
Monthly Rental Rates
Vault Size*	Monthly
7-9 cases	$18.00
10-12 cases	$23.00
15-18 cases	$29.00
20-24 cases	$38.00
23-27 cases	$42.00
31-36 cases	$55.00
37-42 cases	$63.00
42-48 cases	$67.00
47-54 cases	$78.00
56-63 cases	$88.00
64-72 cases	$97.00
85-96 cases	$105.00
108-120 cases	$132.00
