Interview: Robert Mark Kamen, Kamen Estate

At Kamen Estate’s tasting room in downtown Sonoma, Robert Mark Kamen, 72, is padding around in flip flops, cargo shorts and a bright blue T-shirt emblazoned with the greeting ‘Hola!’

In his left ear is an earring, at his right is a mobile phone. He’s short and slight; his uncombed hair is now grey. Quotes from his famous screenplays – ‘Never open the package’ (The Transporter) and ‘I will find you and I will kill you’ (Taken) – shout from the wall behind the long bar.

Scroll down for Elin McCoy’s top six wines from Kamen Estate

As he pours his latest releases of Cabernet, Syrah, Viognier and Sauvignon Blanc, he launches into the improbable story of how he got into the wine business.

It could be one of his screenplays. Kamen’s backstory is filled with romance, action, disaster and passion, and he tells it very well.

From screenwriting to wine

‘I grew up in an orthodox household in the Bronx in New York City, went to NYU, and got a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania,’ he rattles off rapidly while fussing behind the bar. After graduating in the early 1970s, he wrote a novel and showed it to a cousin who knew a film director who said that if he turned it into a screenplay it might make a good movie.

He sold that screenplay to Warner Bros for $135,000 in 1980. To celebrate, he met a friend in Sonoma. ‘We took some wine, rolled some joints and hiked up a mountain. There was no road, no electricity. I suffer from impulse control disorder, so when he said the property was for sale, I blew the money on 280 acres (113ha) just for the view. I still love it.’

Kamen tracked down the guy who grew the pot. It was Grateful Dead-loving viticulturalist Phil Coturri, who became a close friend. ‘Phil’s passion was to grow organic grapes on hillsides,’ Kamen remembers. ‘No one was doing it. I knew nothing, but everyone said I should grow grapes. My child-of-the-1960s ethos kicked in on the organic idea. So we dug a well and put in a road and Phil planted vines. Back then Sonoma was laid back and agricultural. Napa had the sizzle, but Sonoma can make Cabernet that’s just as good.’

For more than a decade, he sold the grapes while living in New York City, eating at acclaimed French-US chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s restaurants several times a week, and writing one successful screenplay after another.

His first few films were dramas, like Taps, which gave Tom Cruise his first major role and also paid to plant the vineyard. The Karate Kid (1984), based on his own experience learning karate, was the game changer, spawning sequels and TV shows. ‘Six months ago it was playing in 600 cinemas around the world,’ says Kamen.

What reshaped his later screenwriting career was his partnership with French producer Luc Besson to create international action movies like Kiss of the Dragon, The Transporter, Taken and more.

His only wine movie, the schmaltzy A Walk in the Clouds (1995) was set in California, and for the final scene, he says, ‘I gave Dan Duckhorn $50,000 to burn a vineyard that had phylloxera and was going to be pulled out.’

Robert Mark Kamen at a glance

Born: 9 October 1947

Grew up: The Bronx, New York City

Education: BA New York University; PhD University of Pennsylvania (American Studies)

Career: Screenwriter and vintner

First vintage of Kamen Wines: 1999

Area under vine: 20ha (main vineyard 14.5ha)

Annual production: 3,000 cases – 2,500 red, 500 white

Grapes grown: Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Grenache, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc

Lives: Moon Mountain AVA, Sonoma, California

Family: Daughters Ali, Jessica and Tory; life partner Evonne Sproat

Hobbies: tai chi, martial arts, cycling

A life in film

Kamen’s screenwriting career spans some 40 years. He was highly successful from the beginning, with most of his scripts, unusually, actually becoming films.

In the first phase of his career, the early 1980s, he says, ‘I wrote small, meaningful dramas.’ Taps (1981) was followed by Split Image (1982), and then Karate Kid (1984), which quickly attained pop culture immortality. Two sequels quickly followed in 1986 and 1989.

The second phase was the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he moved into big action films as what Kamen jokingly calls ‘a script assassin’ for Warner Bros, hired to fix problematic screenplays. They include Under Siege (1992), The Fugitive (1993), The Devil’s Own and The Devil’s Advocate (both 1997).

During the same time frame, he wrote Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) and A Walk in the Clouds (1995), his only wine movie.

From the late 1990s to today he’s collaborated with French director Luc Besson to create a long string of international action/thrillers. The list includes The Fifth Element (1997), Kiss of the Dragon (2001), the Transporter series (2002, 2005, 2008, TV series), and the Taken series (2008, 2012, 2014). His latest scripts were for the film Angel Has Fallen (2019) and the TV series Cobra Kai (2018-2019)

Wine ambitions

Life imitated art when fire devastated his own vineyard in 1996 and ignited his wine ambitions. ‘It was a wake-up call that focused me on what I wanted to do. I thought of selling, but all the insurance guys kept telling me how special the property was, and I came to believe that my whole life led me to make great wine here,’ he says. ‘Plus Jean-Georges said if I made wine, he’d put it in his restaurants.’

His first wine was a 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon, and in 2002 he engaged Cabernet-focused consultant Mark Herold, who has made his wines ever since.

‘For years my art funded my wine obsession. In 2009 we were still losing money and I was sick of running around the country dealing with smirky sommeliers. I hate the hard sell. Then I opened the tasting room and started a wine club. Now the business is profitable.’

Kamen loves to take people up to his vineyard. We climb in his dusty Kawasaki ATV and plunge down dirt tracks bumpy with boulders. It’s a blue-sky day, sunny, and hot, and Kamen gives a running commentary on his land and the Moon Mountain AVA, which he helped establish, and points to neighbouring properties like the one owned by Kirk Hammett, the lead guitarist from Metallica.

The view is spectacular: black volcanic outcroppings, clumps of old oaks, rippling rows of Cabernet, Syrah, Grenache, Viognier and Sauvignon Blanc vines. Viognier? ‘We planted a tiny bit so we could ferment the Syrah with Viognier skins,’ he explains, convinced that, as in the northern Rhône, it adds a subtle nuance.

Kamen is a fan of California’s mountain wines, like his own. ‘They’re bolder, they reflect where they grow, they’re about wildness and elegance, power and finesse.’ Most of his are Cabernets; the parcel for his Lava Rock bottling, he says, is unique, hefting a rock so I can feel how hot it is though the nights are cool. ‘Right here genius is going to happen – but don’t ask me when.’

He’s involved in all the decisions and blending, but claims he doesn’t ‘influence the process’, leaving that to Coturri and Herold. ‘First I wanted to make the greatest wine in the world, then in California, then in Sonoma, and now the greatest wine possible from my vineyard.’

Fires stalked him again in October 2017, on the night of his 70th birthday. You can still see the remnants of dark burned trees and vegetation on the ridges. But it spared the vineyard. ‘The fires made me feel vulnerable,’ he says. His new house, finished in 2019, ‘is fireproof, made of Corten steel, rammed earth walls, poured concrete floors and glass. Water sprinklers buried deep in the ground around it go on automatically if the temperature gets too hot.’

The future

‘I’m like Pangloss [in Voltaire’s Candide],’ says Kamen. ‘An eternal optimist.’ For decades, he planned to eventually live in a house at his vineyard, and now he does, though that ended his marriage.

‘Living here changed me,’ he says. ‘I’m not in a rush, that’s what living among living entities does. We’re so lucky. Every year the fruit shows up and puts you in touch with biorhythms.’

He writes every day, practices Tai Chi, and has just finished the book for a Broadway musical version of The Karate Kid.

Kamen recently asked his three daughters whether he should sell the vineyard. ‘The answer was no,’ he reports. ‘So I put it in a trust; this property is “Kamen’s last stand”. It’s my destiny to make wine on this piece of land for the rest of my life.’

See Elin McCoy’s top six wines from Kamen Estate

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