Richard Moriarty may be best known as the savvy promoter of notorious 1980s parties, such as his "Pimps, Hookers, Drug Dealers and Lawyers Ball." The bacchanalian affairs drew as many as 3,000 people, many of them barely clothed.
"I've been banned from every hotel ballroom in Orange County, plus the Spruce Goose," said Moriarty. "People still come up to me and say either 'I got married' or 'I got divorced because of your parties.' "
At 53, the mellowing playboy--a member of the wealthy Segerstrom clan that turned its lima bean fields into South Coast Plaza--is using his entrepreneurial skills and family agricultural knowledge to develop a different legacy: Newport Beach's first and only vineyard and winery.
"I don't recall another vineyard in the town--unless the Indians were growing them; I don't think they were," said Bill Grundy, president of the Newport Beach Historical Society. "It sounds like a fun thing for Newport."
At least one wine expert said Moriarty picked the right spot to put down roots, calling his 3 1/2 acres overlooking Upper Newport Bay one of "the best places in the world to grow grapes."
On Thursday, he harvested more than a ton of Bordeaux-style grapes from his one-acre vineyard. The grapes will yield about 850 bottles of wine, which he hopes to make available commercially in two years.
Moriarty's first vintage last year produced a bottle of Back Bay Cuvee that recently won a silver medal in the Orange County Fair wine competition. The remainder of the first harvest--30 gallons--continues to age in a single barrel.
"It definitely shows promise," said Blair Wallace, publisher of the Underground Wine Journal, a Costa Mesa-based national magazine for winemakers and connoisseurs. "The location is really intriguing since it has similarities to Bordeaux," a coastal region in southern France.
Coastal vineyards were commonplace in Southern California's early 20th century landscape, long before any grapes were harvested in Napa, Sonoma or Temecula. In fact, Orange County became famous for its citrus only after Anaheim Disease, since renamed Pierce's Disease, wiped out 40,000 acres of vineyards in the central county area.
But rising land prices, more than disease, ultimately destroyed the local wine industry.
A few boutique vineyards in the Los Angeles area have taken root over the last two decades. They are operations started by wealthy men whose passion for quality wines outweighed bottom-line concerns.
