Jean-Charles Boisset has stealthily built a $450 million oenological empire—and uncorked a lusty secret agent persona.
of 50-plus guests in New York’s Meatpacking District as gold magnums of Champagne clink in the background. It’s a Last Supper–inspired meal for the French-born winemaker, part of his multicity tour to promote a $395 coffee table book calledAs saumon à l’oseille arrives with a rich pinot noir, Boisset begins to explain his selection, an unusual blend of grapes from Burgundy and California called JCB No. 3.
Sex is clearly the theme of this Boisset soirée, where the innuendo-filled jokes flow as freely as the wine. Leopard-print silk napkins sit on a red velvet tablecloth, and a mirror has replaced the ceiling . Dates never sit together, and Boisset encourages touching . Jean-Charles Boisset, in the Raymond Vineyards’ Red Room, has a boutique that sells his jewelry—and a bobblehead of himself.
He brought that maverick philosophy to America. In 1991, Boisset started leading the family import business in San Francisco and searching for family-owned wineries with history to acquire. Buena Vista, after retreating from national distribution, looked promising, but the owners rebuked Boisset’s offer. “It was very innovative at the time, very iconoclast[ic] from a strategy standpoint. No one looked at California the way we looked at it,” he says.
That includes his not-so-secret identity, Agent 69, an ersatz James Bond who brandishes swords and rescues women—and wine—at lavish parties and in several very campy videos. It’s sometimes difficult to tell where the serious winemaker ends and the louche alter ego begins. At Raymond’s tasting room, visitors on tours are ushered past industrial tanks and mannequins hanging upside-down on fuzzy red swings, wearing sheer bras and leopard-print leggings.
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