Kyle Maclachlan's Pursued by Bear wines
Diane, 11:30 AM, February 24th. Entering wine heaven!
Kyle Maclachlan is a prodigal son of the Pacific Northwest. Some of his most recognizable roles — Twin Peaks, Portlandia — are about as quintessentially Washington State as being blown up by an Amazon drone.
Kyle is from Yakima (pronounced YAK-ima) in Eastern Washington and was discovered for Dune while doing regional theatre in Seattle. As Kyle’s wine manager said, “Kyle being from Washington—an Eastern Washington boy—he’s down to earth, funny, quirky but also smart and passionate.”
If I may translate, what he’s saying is that Kyle is twee. When your corner of the country is known for Blundstones, coffee and rain you are going to produce an army of quirkily-affected folx.
Kyle Maclachlan as Detective Cooper in Twin Peaks is peak 2012-Tumblr-girl core. It is 90s, it is blue jeans, it is douglas fir trees. Who killed reblogged Laura Palmer?
I kind of don’t care about Twin Peaks which is good because it is the only thing stopping me from being an absolute monster of a person. I am a single Criterion Collection log-in away from working at a gallery.
I do care about Blue Velvet though, and the scenes between Kyle, the provincial college student, and Isabella Rossellini, the troubled lounge singer, are hot hot hot!!!! Kyle is excellent as the naive type with enough trustworthiness to take you into Lynch’s strange worlds. As the coffee-selling director said of MacLachlan: "Kyle plays innocents who are interested in the mysteries of life.”
Kyle, now 65, has fully embraced the role of zaddy. He fits into a strata of actors — Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, and I am willing to hear arguments for Jerry Seinfeld — who have been embraced by the fashion girlies. Here he is with Jeff Goldblum walking at the Prada fall 2022 show. Here he is in — trigger warning — Online Ceramics x Heaven by Marc Jacobs. These Blackbird Spyplane bozos have to stop putting normal-looking men in Marni mohair sweaters across the pages of GQ!!! Please help!!!
What is it about these men? My guess: They have that straight-edge J Crew-catalogue handsomeness suffused with the banal eccentricity of small-town character actors. I woke up in cold sweats with this thought: are they the Jennifer Coolidge of straight women???
Pursued by Bear (which is what happens every time I go to the Eagle) (Okay I have never been to the Eagle) was founded during Kyle’s renaissance in the mid-aughts (Orso n Hodge is scarier than anything David Lynch could cook up), as a collaboration with Dunham Cellars in Washington’s Columbia Valley.
Said Kyle of the brand: “There's a lot of downtime when you're an actor waiting for that next job. I decided to fill it with a hobby, and now that hobby has become a small business. I grew up in eastern Washington State, and I basically make these wines in my backyard.”
The name is, of course, a very famous stage direction from The Winter’s Tale (he is an actor, get it?). And that’s only the beginning of its PNW adorkability: he produces twee little video campaigns — Beary Tales — for the product, and he has just opened a tasting room in a former hair salon/bike shop in downtown Walla Walla, Washington that’s just like, a little house… Truthfully, it looks very cozy in a normal, nice way.
And yet, behind his tweeness, Kyle is serious about wine. His bottles often show up on Best of Washington lists, without mention of its celebrity owner, and reliably get 90+ points from Wine Enthusiast and other sites. You can’t find his Cabernet Sauvignon for under $70, his Syrah for under $60. I had to buy his starter bottle, the Bear Cub red blend, which retails for $40.
Apparently, he’s very hands-on with both the production and branding of the label. He is often spotted just sitting in his tasting room, like he’s Sarah Jessica Parker at her shoe store reading Where the Crawdads Sing on her iPad.
And yet! And yet! I genuinely find Kyle and his clear Warby Parker frames endearing, edging on twee but with enough wink and nod for me to let it slide. Pursued by Bear does not feel like some scheming celebrity vanity project, but rather a humble attempt at honest work. The wine uses no images of the man, nor makes reference to his body of work. I fear I cannot be pessimistic about this one. Come back next time.
And sorry but the wine was good. Easily the best celebrity wine I’ve tried thus far. The 2018 Bear Cub, a blend of mostly Cabernet Sauvignon (93%) with some Merlot and Cabernet Franc, was a low-acid, full-bodied, jammy wine with a bramble-y, blackberry quality. It had a really rich, luxurious mouthfeel, so rich with caramel it tasted like pudding. It felt quintessentially Washingtonian.
I could definitely see myself drinking this with a $38 half Mary’s roast chicken in an absolutely cozy Seattle bistro as the fog rolls in... Kurt was murdered by the CIA!