David Jones is only in Naples for a few days. The insurance coverage broker and his better half, Judy, flew in from their house in Santa Barbara, California, to load before heading to New york city. From there, it’s on to Paris and Stockholm, where they’ll board a 65-day cruise with stops in 45 ports, consisting of some of the most attractive and ancient wine areas in Europe: Portugal’s Douro Valley, Sicily, Provence and among David’s two beloveds, Bordeaux. (The other, Burgundy, is a bit far inland for the 55-ton Elegance.) Given his enthusiasm for collecting, you might presume he’s treating this abroad sojourn the method a Real Housewife treats a shopping spree through Dubai. But when asked about his buying plans, David dissents with a laugh, “I purchase enough wine here. I don’t require to buy it over there, too.”
Just how much red wine is enough red wine? For David, the number is about 3,000 bottles, mainly purchased from annual Acker auctions in New york city, specialized white wine merchants and personal collectors, like his brother-in-grape Peter Rizzo, owner of Natural Wine Naples. “There’s constantly going to be somebody with more,” David says, referencing a time he met a collector at a New York auction who kept a 12,000-bottle cellar worth $12 million. “I do not need that as my criteria. I’m really pleased with the quantity I have.”
His beachfront condominium on Gulf Shore Boulevard North, though roomy, can’t quite lodge his collection. Instead, it rests in a good-looking, custom-built, 55-degree cellar in a warehouse off Pine Ridge Roadway, which David passionately nicknamed “The Vehicle Barn” for the armada of lorries (a Bentley, 3 Porsches, a Lamborghini Urus and 2 Ferraris) that safeguards 7 figures worth of white wine. The valued bottles include vintages from Pétrus and Latour from the 1940s and 1950s, and a nine-liter Taittinger Champagne engraved with congratulations to Michael Jordan and the 1996 NBA champ, the Chicago Bulls.
The collection began little when David was in his late 20s. During a serendipitous tasting at a Napa wine store, “I had a Groth Reserve 1985– a terrific year in California for cabernet– and it simply blew me away,” he recalls. He purchased a case, then another, then another. A few of those bottles still reside in his cellar. “They’re nearly 40 years of ages and still amazing,” says David, who chooses age on his red wines, even past critics’ perfect drinking windows. “I’ve always had that sort of palate. If you stated, ‘Oh, this is too old,’ I would state, ‘Oh, this is great.’ That’s what’s so wonderful about wine. There is no right and incorrect. I believe a fully grown red wine displays all the best characteristics of what the wine maker planned.”
Bordeaux and Burgundy became David’s primary focus about 20 years earlier, starting when he was on the auction committee for an advantage for Youth Sanctuary, the Naples shelter for kids and teenagers. A collector contributed some 1964 and 1966 Bordeaux, and David, fascinated by these older bottles, purchased the lot. “That set me off on older red wines,” he says. Around the same time, his palate started to avoid the feistier tannins he found more bearable in his youth. A pal recommended he attempt Burgundies. A detail-oriented, research-driven person, David found out whatever he might about the French region. “There is a lot of history. They have actually been growing pinot noir grapes there for a thousand-plus years in rock soil– it’s not dirt; you see stones. There’s a minerality and softness to the white wines, a great deal of skill and grace.”
David keeps his collection in between his Santa Barbara, CA and Naples cellars, where about 50 percent of the bottles are Burgundies. (Photo by Brian Tietz)
Amongst his cherished Burgundies, which now account for 50 percent of his collection, are 1969 and 1999 Domaine Ponsot, two unusual, exceptional vintages from one of the area’s legacy manufacturers. David opened them both for a supper celebration he just recently hosted. At another, he popped 5 bottles of Château Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux from 1961, “most likely the second-best [classic] of that century,” he says. To David– the previous head of the Naples chapter of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, an international society devoted to Burgundy– white wine isn’t something to be hoarded away or appreciated like museum artifacts. In some cases, even the cognoscenti he welcomes to supper are shocked by what he’s pouring. “What else am I gon na do with it, sit home alone and drink it?” he muses. “I delight in sharing wine with like-minded individuals tremendously.”
When David’s cruise check outs Bordeaux, he’s less thinking about appointment tastings at seminal châteaux than the supper he’s having with a local family. “They cook dinner and serve wines from their small vineyard and other individuals in the village– it’s random; we don’t know who they are,” he states. No names, no egos, just the easy enjoyment of sharing great, truthful food and drink. “I’m truly looking forward to that.”