It’s Thursday afternoon in Manhattan and Michael Diamond, better known as Mike D of the Beastie Boys, is talking about the wines of Burgundy. He's also talking about The Replacements, the shambolic princes of Minneapolis rock in the 1980s, a band that was notorious for being incandescent on stage one night and a sputtering wreck the next.
“One out of 10 shows could be absolutely brilliant,” Diamond says. “Two could make you give up ever wanting to see bands. Seven could be somewhere in between.”
Burgundies are like that, too. “You have these fleeting moments,” and then you open another bottle and it’s “a profound letdown,” he says. “That kind of lets you know it’s real.”
Reality and fragility—in wine and in life—have been heavy on Diamond’s mind in recent years. He’s 51 now, the father of two sons. His friend and fellow Beastie Adam “MCA” Yauch died of cancer five years ago, and the curtain has fallen on Diamond’s marriage to filmmaker Tamra Davis. Tucked into a booth at Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria on Great Jones Street, Diamond comes across as open and cordial, but also muted, even philosophical.
As the heyday of the Beastie Boys has faded into the past, two pursuits have consumed him: surfing and wine. In fact, it was during a surfing trip to Costa Rica about a decade ago that Diamond’s grape obsession began to take hold. “I think that was the start of my love affair with white Burgundy,” he says. “I didn’t realize the complexity that could be achieved in white wine.” Some wine dealers were along for the ride in Costa Rica; they’d brought a few cases to the beach. Diamond would hit the waves during the day and sip their wine in the evening. He started to realize that he had missed out on a whole realm of beauty.
“I really liked learning about the wines,” he says. “I’d had so much opportunity during my decades of touring.” But when the Beasties traveled around the world, he usually spent his free time browsing record shops on a hunt for obscure vinyl. Now, like his friend James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem (who had a similar epiphany at a wine bar in Paris in 2008), he wanted to get his hands on some killer bottles.
Fast-forward to 2017, and Diamond’s epicurean inclinations have led to a twist of professional reinvention. This fall he’ll make his debut as a wine MC, putting together much of the beverage list for Hearth & Hound, opening October 31. Chef April Bloomfield and business partner Ken Friedman's highly anticipated restaurant will occupy the patio-blessed space on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles that used to house the Cat & Fiddle.
Diamond and Friedman are longtime friends (“I’ve known him for longer than I want to admit,” Friedman says), and both of them have memories of hanging out at the Cat & Fiddle, which was down the street from the Hollywood Palladium and served as a de facto pub for homesick British bands like the Buzzcocks and the Smiths. Friedman, who spent his early career phase working in the music business, was even present at the Fiddle for a pivotal moment: He and Johnny Marr, the guitarist from the Smiths, held a summit at the pub in the 1980s to discuss the prospect of shooting a video. Morrissey found the idea loathsome. The acrimonious demise of the Smiths came soon after.
Having a musician picking the wines at Hearth & Hound makes symbolic sense, but Friedman says he invited Diamond to take on the job after noticing his aptitude for wine selection at restaurants. “He’s got a really good palate,” Friedman says. “He picks the perfect wine every time. He knows how to describe them. I said, ‘You should be a wine director and eventually have a wine bar.’ He said, ‘Yeah, you’re right, I should. Will you help me?’ Then he followed up and said, ‘I’m really interested in doing this.’”
Diamond won’t be wandering the cellar alone at Hearth & Hound. He’s got a mentor of sorts in République veteran Taylor Parsons, who’s also a major part of the project, and an ally in Maxfield Schnee, a young L.A. wine maven who has worked with chefs like Josef Centeno. Diamond is quick to point out that he doesn’t pretend to have anything resembling their sommelier qualifications. “All these men and women who have suffered and have put in thousands of hours—I’m not that person,” he says. “Full disclosure.”
Nor will Diamond, who lives way over in Malibu, necessarily be pouring wine by the side of your table in Hollywood. “He’ll come in when he wants to and we’ll pay for his Uber,” Friedman says. “If he’s not on the floor, I hope people won’t walk out.”
The wine list, however, is meant to be a reflection of Diamond’s sensibilities, which lean toward affordable surprises from both established producers and upstarts. He’s not necessarily a fan of the natural-wine boom—unlike Murphy, who owns the Brooklyn spot the Four Horsemen. “James and I vehemently disagree,” Diamond says. “There are some wines he thinks are brilliant that taste like Christmas trees to me.”
Diamond won’t reveal the bottles he has picked for Hearth & Hound, but offers assurances that he’s going after non-elitist choices that “don’t demand a lot of people.”
“It's like a record you can put on at a party that’s still really good, but it’s not pop junk,” Diamond explains. “I come from music. Punk rock was my first music—I can’t ever escape that attitude.” (Friedman describes Diamond’s wine philosophy as “take away the pomp.”)
Lately Diamond has figured out that coming up with a distinctive and compelling wine list has a weird amount of overlap with his previous line of work. “It’s very similar to making a record,” he says. “If you have a point of view, it matters. If you don’t have a point of view, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.”
