A wine adventureland

So, you’re a well-heeled wine lover and you’re in Orange County around dinner time and you want a good meal and a great bottle of California Cabernet. Where do you go?

How about Disneyland?

OK, so it’s not Disneyland proper, not Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. But the Napa Rose restaurant and its 17,000-bottle wine cellar are in the Grand Californian Hotel, on Disneyland Drive, in the heart of the Disneyland/Downtown Disney/California Adventure complex.

With more than 1,000 wine choices -- 90% of them from California -- Napa Rose has one of the best California cellars anywhere in the country, including multiple vintages of Harlan, Bryant Family, Colgin, Dalla Valle, Screaming Eagle, Grace Family (and a little Marcassin Chardonnay and Sine Qua Non Syrah and Pinot Noir as well).

It’s not just the wine that makes Napa Rose an extraordinary experience for wine lovers, though. It’s the wine service. The restaurant has 26 certified sommeliers -- including chef Andrew Sutton, three sous-chefs, one line cook, virtually all the servers, the bartenders, one of the hosts, a busboy and manager-sommelier Michael Jordan (no, not that Michael Jordan -- this one is 5-foot-4 1/2).

When my son and a friend and I had dinner at Napa Rose recently, every employee who came by -- Jordan, Sutton, two waiters and a busboy -- had something intelligent to say or ask about each wine on our table. And there were plenty of wines -- nine in all -- since Napa Rose has 75 different half-bottles, and 60 wines by the glass, and it doesn’t take much to persuade Jordan to open almost anything on his list, even for just a glass or two.

“I love drinking wine and buying wine and selling wine,� Jordan says, “but the best part of my job is teaching wine classes for the staff. Each class lasts six months ... and when it’s done, they take a two-day written exam to qualify as stage one sommeliers. All but one of our people have passed, including a guy who was working in a coffee shop two years ago.�

Napa Rose is anything but a coffee shop. Yes, people often come here more casually dressed than they would at, say, Patina or Aubergine, and the first-name-only name tags on every server’s chest does give the place a vaguely kitschy feel. This is a serious restaurant, though, with an open kitchen, well-spaced tables and much better food than anyone has a right to expect with a view of Grizzly Peak in the distance.

Sutton cooked previously at Auberge du Soleil in the Napa Valley, and S. Irene Virbila, The Times’ restaurant critic, gave Napa Rose two stars when she reviewed it in 2001.

“We’re a destination restaurant for a lot of locals,� Jordan says. “They account for about 30% of our customers.�

Jordan can’t claim full credit. Disney began to showcase wine to keep pace with “the evolution of food and wine interest in this country� when it opened Epcot Center at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., in 1982, says Dieter Hannig, senior vice president of Walt Disney World Food & Beverage.

Hannig says he took the wine program to “the next level� in 1995, with the opening of the California Grill, which in essence became the vinous godfather to Napa Rose.

Jordan was wooed away from the Patina Group to open Napa Rose, but when he first wrote to several important California winemakers to ask for allocations, “a lot of them really dissed me,� he says. “They basically said, ‘Are you sure people who come to Disneyland are going to spend more than $100 for a bottle of wine?’ �

Jordan was sure. And he was right.

“We sell significant bottles every week,� he says. “A few months ago, I even ran out of Screaming Eagle� -- at $1,600 for the 1998 and $2,500 for the ‘96! (He has since restocked.)

Napa Rose also has a number of far more affordable wines -- a 2000 Fannuchi Trousseau Gris for $27 and a 2001 Echelon Pinot Grigio for $29 among them -- and Jordan clearly takes just as much pleasure from introducing customers to those as he does from opening the big-ticket wines.

His current favorite is a 2001 Pinot Noir from Papapietro Perry that he discovered while wandering along the Russian River in Sonoma. At $75, it isn’t cheap -- there are 10 less expensive Pinots on the list -- but it is an aromatic, full-bodied Pinot that proved a perfect companion to the risotto with fresh morels, peas and asparagus that chef Sutton prepared for our dinner.

For all his passion, Jordan came to wine relatively late in his restaurant career -- 12 years ago, when he was general manager at Pavilion restaurant in the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach.

“If you’re going to have a good wine list in a good restaurant,� he says, “you better know something about it.�

Jordan already knew something about food, having essentially grown up in restaurants. “My dad grew up in Hoboken with Frank Sinatra,� he says matter-of-factly, “and when my dad came to L.A., Sinatra was a co-owner of the Villa Capri. My dad asked him for a job and he got one, as a busboy, in 1955, along with Jean Leon.�

Both soon became waiters and two years later, Leon left Villa Capri and purchased the year-old La Scala, which he quickly turned into one of the city’s best restaurants -- and one of its first celebrity hangouts -- with Jordan’s father, Matty, as the maitre d’.

The family’s original name was Giordano, and after six years at La Scala, Matty returned to his Italian roots, with his own restaurant and his original first name, Matteo.

Matteo’s, on Westwood Boulevard, also became a celebrity hangout. Regulars included presidents Reagan and Ford, as well as Sinatra (who had his own corner booth), Milton Berle, Phyllis Diller and mobsters Mickey Cohen and Sam Giancana.

Young Michael spent his after-school time in the restaurant, washing pots and pans and making ravioli and lasagna from the time he was 11; by the time he was through with school, Matteo’s had opened a restaurant in Corona del Mar and two in Hawaii.

Jordan wound up cooking at all the Matteo’s restaurants, except the one in Westwood, before striking out on his own and winding up with the Patina Group until he was recruited to run Napa Rose.

The restaurant averages 200 to 300 dinners a night -- “180 is a slow night,� Jordan says -- and 28% of the revenue comes from wine.

Of course, even a restaurant with a good wine list has a few customers who insist on bringing their own.

“I welcome that if you bring in a great bottle or a bottle that has special meaning for you,� he says, “but some people come in with a white Zinfandel.�

What does he do then?

“I charge them the regular $17 corkage� -- about triple what they probably paid for the wine itself -- “and I try to smile. But it really hurts. They’re really missing a big part of the experience.�

You might say their behavior is, well, Mickey Mouse.

David Shaw can be reached at [email protected].