Imagine Coco Chanel going down a table of potential perfume scents and picking No. 5 in the lineup.
"I went to a whole bunch of vineyards all over Italy, and I asked them not to tell me how much it costs and not to tell me all the production values, and I just picked what I liked," she said.
Bracco and her wines will be part of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa's third annual "Women in Wine" event tomorrow, a celebration of wines made and chosen by women that's also a charity event supporting breast cancer research and victims of domestic violence.
The Borgata Event Center will have tasting areas for about a dozen different wine lines. There will be two auctions, one silent and one live, for spectacular wine, travel, food and entertainment-related items.
"Opus One donated a private tasting. There is a trip through Chile and Argentina for two to seven wineries," said Anjoleena Griffin-Holst, the Borgata's wine director. "This is a premier event, something that you won't see anywhere else."
The chefs from the Borgata restaurants - Bobby Flay Steak, the Homestead, Wolfgang Puck American Grille, Speccio and Ombra - will offer their specialties, while Michael Mina, the chef at SeaBlue, will do lunch for those who buy a Premium Plus ticket at $295.
Former Olympic skating gold medalist Peggy Fleming, who is also a winemaker with her Fleming Jenkins label from California, will be there, too. Fleming is a breast cancer survivor, and $2 from every bottle sold of Victories, the Fleming Jenkins rose, goes to breast cancer research.
Fleming, talking from her home in Los Gatos, Calif., near San Jose, said her winery came about mostly as a landscaping venture.
"My son had a half-pipe skateboarding course back there, and when he went away to college, we wanted to do something different, so we planted wine grapes," she said. Her husband retired from his dermatology practice and took courses in winemaking at the University of California at Davis.
