Bacchus Smiled

Jack Farrell looks less like a wine drinker than a bourbon man. Hale and ruddy, with a thick white mustache and a balding pate. You can imagine him in brightly colored golf togs or, if you’re given to this sort of fancy, the soft, dark clothes of a Mafia don.

But most days, the chairman of Haskell’s wears sweater vests and crisp, white shirts with gold cufflinks. No tie. He speaks in a gruff voice and uses an old-fashioned telephone with a cord and strides with a bearish tilt through the crooked hallways above his narrow Minneapolis storefront on Ninth Street downtown.

Inside his office is a massive desk piled with papers, several magnums of wine, a fat paperback called The Big Book of Bodily Functions, dozens of pens, and various dust-covered awards. On the walls, photographs—maybe 50—of clustered families, European countryside, doddering old men in hats. There are framed wine labels and newspaper articles, and the room is lined with bookshelves: The Ultimate Guide to Buying Wine, The Origins and Ancient History of Wine, The Wine Bible. There’s also a worn couch, circa 1972.

If you visit—during one of those brief periods when Farrell is in town, rather than in the France or Sicily or Argentina or Washington’s Yakima Valley—he’ll nod you brusquely into the leather chair in front of the desk. The phone will ring. He’ll pick it up and say only, “Yes?” Then he’ll pause, nod, and confirm a place and time. “It’ll be ready,” he’ll say. “No problem.”

It could have been someone from the White House or winemaker Tim Mondavi or an organizer from a black-tie benefit that will raise millions. But Farrell won’t mention this. Instead, he will apologize and call his secretary to say, “No more calls,” then lean back in his chair and turn to you with an interested expression, despite his sleepy eyes.

And you’d never guess to look at him that Jack Farrell is one of the world’s leading experts on wine.