Travel & Food

ASPEN, Colo.—Stroll through the lobby of the St. Regis hotel in late afternoon and you’re likely to encounter a blonde woman wielding a sword. Dare to inquire and you’ll find she’s about to lop the head off a bottle of champagne.

The practice is known as sabering, a ritual christened by Napoleon and adopted by John Jacob Astor, founder of the St. Regis, in 1904.

In Aspen, LeeAnn Kaufmann conducts the daily ceremony by virtue of her job—as the resort’s sommelier.

Bucking the percentages in a profession where female winemakers, vineyard directors and sommeliers still rank in the single digits, Kaufman’s blade cuts through more glass than the neck of a bottle. Since joining the St. Regis last July, she’s revolutionized her role and overhauled the wine list.

“Now that I’m here I feel like the St. Regis and I really needed each other. They needed a bit of a change, and I’m a different brand of sommelier,” said Kaufman. “I’m hearted and whimsical, and don’t take myself too seriously.”

Inspired by her Italian grandfather who made his own wine in the heat of the California desert, Kaufman found her calling by default. A graduate in education, she taught elementary school on the West Coast before moving to New York with her fiancé, a culinary student whose cuisine inspired her to seek out perfect pairings.

“I got a burst of great fortune at a garage sale where I bought six cases of Rothschild Margaux Château Palmers for $25. Before I knew it, I was lining a coat closet with foam insulation and making it a wine cellar,” Kaufman said.

A few years later, after earning her sommelier certificate in San Francisco, she honed her ingenuity at Hush, a swank eatery in Laguna Beach.

“I wrote the biggest list I’ve ever written in my career—4,000 bottles—and the restaurant had no storage. I did some research and found we could buy old tanker containers and guys would insulate and refrigerate them,” Kaufman recalled. “I talked to the owner, a fanatic about wine, and we ordered two.  A crane dropped them off in our parking lot.”

In addition to her standard duties, Kaufman bartered vigorously for wines the restaurant needed to acquire certain “verticals,” or complete lines, from particular vineyards.

“There was no other wine list anywhere in southern California that could match our quality, quantity or diversity. We had sections of Napa Valley wines in complete verticals that went back 20 years,” Kaufman said. “Oh boy, it was hard to manage but did I love it!”

Though she worked a few stints in Las Vegas, including one at the Bellagio, Kaufman’s route to Aspen was definitely not vertical. From Laguna she took a post as education director for Vérité Winery in Sonoma.

“Everybody dreams of having the winery lifestyle. I had that dream and I lived it,” she said. “I came to work in a place that was beautiful and magical; people were happy to be there, and the wines were incredible. If I wasn’t sitting down conducting a tasting for guests, I was out in the vineyards.”

Enticed once again to leave the Pacific coast, Kaufman regarded the opportunity at the St. Regis as the next great move. She has family in the valley, and felt pulled by a venue open to ideas she’d been nurturing for years—many of them ignited by women who make wine. 

“I made a conscious decision to bring these women in,” she said. “It’s true … they’re getting more exposure every day, but not here in Aspen. People who live here or come to visit need to know how great they are. They make wines that are at once elegant and intense. They bring us this incredible balance. I taste the difference all around: from the label and the way it looks to how it hits the palette.”

Half of the winemakers on the St. Regis list are women, many of whom Kaufman looks forward to meeting in person at next summer’s Food and Wine Festival. She wants to chat with women like Anna Monticelli, who at 29 makes “the most amazing Napa reds” in Kaufman’s opinion, and May-Britt Malbec, who pulls fruit from single patches of soil in her vineyard to make rare, sophisticated blends.

“Perhaps because they’re more nurturing, women pay closer attention to what they’re doing,” said Kaufman. “A lot of them limit their production to 1,500 or 3,000 cases, as opposed to 100,000. That allows for experimentation, so they really taste what they’re making and know exactly what they’re looking for.”

The sommelier introduces Monticelli and Malbec, along with pioneers like Helen Turley and Heidi Peterson Barrett in her “Women in Winemaking” course at the St. Regis. It is one of a half-dozen classes Kaufman teaches to hotel guests who opt off the mountain for a day to sip and learn about wine. Other programs include “Wines by the Glass” and “Hidden Gems of California.”

Her classes are open to anyone in town, while diners from across the globe routinely receive private lessons during tableside chats. Kaufman’s mission is always to ignite their sense of adventure.

“It’s important to me, particularly with our European clients, that they get to know our wines here because [the wines are] simply amazing. If people want to talk about point scale, I tell them that more 100-point wines are coming out of California than ever before,” said Kaufman. “Winemakers there are smarter, they have a lighter touch, and the fruit is becoming better every year.”

“I want great wines that are exclusive to the Regis, like Ilaria and Celia Welch. I’m going to bring Welch’s “Scarecrow” line in here if I have to drive to California and get it myself,” she said.

Tuscany’s Castello Banfi, where Cristina Mariani-May runs the globally renowned family estate in Montalcino, is also in her sights. The winemaker herself noted in the wine blog “Avvinare” that many Italian daughters are now taking over their fathers’ vineyards as Italy begins to push through centuries-old gender barriers.

“Some growers in Europe didn’t have prodigal sons, but instead had these amazing daughters, who said we can do it,” said Kaufma. ”And they’re kicking it!”

The sommelier tastes about 200 wines a week when she’s adding or changing selections. The samples direct her decisions, but only in context with the wine’s story. She wants to tell her guests about the vineyard’s history, elevation and namesake. She wants to share how she herself was trained to taste the fruit in the soil by eating dirt—so that one day she could identify traces of fruit and soil in the essence of the wine.

Before John Jacob Astor perished on the Titanic in 1912, he sabered champagne every day at sunset, gathering friends, family and guests of the St. Regis to celebrate the transition from day to night. Kaufman admits she continues the tradition—performed daily in St. Regis resorts all over the world—with Astor in mind. She also says that she sabers for snow and for the Broncos.

As Napoleon once said, “Champagne! In victory one deserves it; in defeat one needs it.”