by Jason Wilson
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Trump does not in fact own one of the largest wineries in the country. His is one of about 9,000 wineries in the United States that produce less than 50,000 cases per year. By contrast, at least 65 American wineries produce more than 500,000 cases a year.
A month after my time in Scotland, I’m standing at the bar of the Trump Winery tasting room, just 14 minutes down the road from Jefferson’s Monticello and a half mile up Blenheim Road from Dave Matthews’s Blenheim Vineyards. It’s a sunny autumn Sunday, and plenty of people are taking advantage of the winery’s “designated picnic area” and its lovely views. The tasting room is packed, and there’s a security guard scanning the crowd. Behind me, a man has spilled a bottle of red wine down the front of him, and a woman is spritzing him with a water bottle. “Can I taste the sparkling rosé?” the young woman next to me asks. No, she’s told. She has to be a member of Trump Winery’s Wine Club to taste the sparkling rosé.
I’ve paid $15 for a tasting of five wines. The wine, as Washington Post wine critic Dave McIntyre has written, is “pretty good.” Though certainly not all of it. The sparkling blanc de blancs and the mildly oaked chardonnay are the most promising; the “meritage” Bordeaux blend and the cabernet sauvignon are fruit bombs and sort of meh; and the cru dessert wine that’s aged in Jack Daniel’s barrels is a sweet-toothache disaster.
I’m having trouble concentrating on the wines because the big screen above the tasting bar is playing a series of videos. The volume is muted, but there is sweeping footage of the vines, glamorous images of weddings, and shots of the winemakers. Every once in a while, Eric Trump pops onto the screen—arriving at the estate in the Trump helicopter, touring the grounds, or talking to the camera. I recall that Eric and his siblings have been put in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization. When the videos end and switch to the next, you can see the video file names. One of them clearly reads “DJT edited out.”
After the tasting, I drive up to the Albemarle Estate, the 26,000-square-foot, 45-room manor house that Trump has converted into a luxury boutique hotel. The Albemarle Estate was built in the 1980s by the late billionaire John Kluge (at one time the richest man in America) and his third wife, Patricia Kluge, who also owned the winery. After a divorce and John Kluge’s death, Patricia fell on hard times, defaulted on loans, and was facing foreclosure. Though she had originally been asking $100 million for the estate, in 2012 Trump swooped in and picked up the place for a mere $6.2 million.
The guest rooms are all named after US presidents from Virginia, and I’m staying in Monroe (there’s also Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and so on). The rooms at the Albemarle Estate are even more over-the-top than at the other Trump properties: an ornate gold-trimmed bed with the same crownlike headboard as in Scotland; shelves with such knickknacks as a leather satchel, an old pipe, and a pewter goblet. Gold accents, such as a gold soap dish, glisten throughout the bathroom. And the branding, even for a Trump property, borders on absurd. Here, besides the robe, the slippers, and the toiletries, I get Trump mouthwash and a Trump hair comb.
Then, on the desk, is the pièce de résistance: the huge, lavishly illustrated Trump Magazine. Amid the breathless travel features—on the Trump golf courses, on “A Day in the Life of a Trump Bride,” on food and drink at Trump-owned destinations, on the Trump Cookie at the golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Wine by the Crystal Spoon at the lounge at the Trump hotel in Washington—there are “exclusive interviews” with Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. In the Q&A with Donald Jr., he’s asked: “If you had to give advice to a high school student, what would it be?” His reply: “If you always go with your instincts and never second-guess yourself, you will set yourself up for enormous success.” Don Jr. is then asked, “What would you change about your life if you could?” He says, “I am really lucky so I would not change anything. But if I did change anything, I would add more hours to the day.”
At 6 p.m., there is a tour of the estate grounds, given by the hotel manager; I gather with a half dozen other guests. The tour mixes practicalities with what I guess we might call the “historical.” Since the Albemarle Estate dates to only the 1980s and has had one owner before Trump, the big themes espoused by the guide appear to be: (A) how crazily spendthrift the Kluges were, and how that led to their financial ruin; and (B) what a cunning and opportunistic businessman Donald Trump is for acquiring this $100 million mansion for only $6.2 million. “Mrs. Kluge tried to build the winery all at once, and it bankrupted her,” says our guide. “She’s a very tragic woman.” (“She is neither tragic nor a spendthrift, and the vineyard and winery were built over many years,” said William Moses, Kluge’s current husband, in a response.)
We walk through hallways plastered with gaudy wallpaper that looks like a Roman toga hanging on a curtain rod, and we gaze out the big windows at the faux-classical sculptures and faux-English hedges and fountains in a garden that appears as if it were dreamt up by a Mafia don pretending to be a British aristocrat. We wander down a grand hallway that looks like a Jersey McMansion version of Versailles imagined by Donatella Versace, and our guide shows us busts of Jefferson and Washington. “They’re working on busts of all the Virginia presidents,” he says.
Someone asks, with a chuckle, “Is one of Trump next?” The manager smiles and shrugs his shoulders. Later, in the theater, we see framed photos of Trump with celebrities like Sylvester Stallone, Christian Bale, and Michael Douglas—as well as Trump on the covers of a Billionaire magazine from 2004 and a Forbes 400 “Richest People in America” issue from 2003. It doesn’t seem impossible that a Trump bust is forthcoming.
Numerous times throughout the tour, the manager says things like “Trump did this” or “Trump did that” in renovating the mansion. At one point, one of the men on the tour speaks up and says, “Now, you mean Eric Trump, right? Doesn’t he run this property now?”
“Yes, yes,” says the manager. “Of course.”
The tour ends at the pool house, and the manager asks if we have any questions. “Pool towels?” says one woman. “Where are those?”
“Oh, there’s a restroom right around the corner, and there’s a bunch of pool towels in the closet,” he says. “Basically, this is y’all’s house while you’re here.” That may be because the Albemarle Estate is being run on a skeleton staff, and we’re sort of on our own.
When someone asks if we can eat here this evening, we’re told no, the closest restaurants are 20 minutes away in downtown Charlottesville. A couple, who presumably have been tasting wine all afternoon—and have likely paid anywhere from $350 to $500 per night—look at each other with exasperated expressions. The only food made available that evening was a jar of chocolate chip cookies, offered by the lone night manager.
After I return later from Charlottesville, I grab a pool cue from under a bust of Julius Caesar and shoot some billiards on the big red table while I watch a football game on television. I’m surrounded by bookshelves that seem to have been curated by a decorator who just said, “Get me some books!” There are leather-bound volumes of Virginia law codes dating to the 1950s and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books filling some shelves. Novels by Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Dan Brown, and David Baldacci stand on the same shelf as Colin Powell’s My American Journey. Robert E. Lee: The Man and the Soldier is stacked between The Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener and The Home Book of Trees and Shrubs. Dinesh D’Souza’s Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream and William McGowan’s Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism are shelved near America’s Women by Gail Collins and, by B. H. Sumner, A Short History of Russia.
It’s a balmy night in Panama City, and I’m having a rum at the bar of the largely empty Ocean Sun Casino, which is next door to the largely empty Trump International Hotel & Tower Panama, where I’m staying. I’m talking with a friendly young Frenchman who’s telling me about his life here as a bitcoin trader. Apparently, he’s moved to Panama because of t
he favorable tax situation for his line of work. Tomorrow, he says, he’ll be moving into a condo in the Trump tower, which he says he’s rented very cheaply. (The Trump Organization is not the owner of this tower, but it has managed the hotel property since its opening.)
I met him a little earlier at the blackjack table—the only table where there was much buzz or activity. I sat between him and a Russian guy in a white jacket who kept giving everyone at the table unsolicited advice on when to take a hit and when to stay. At the other end of the table was a silent, serious-faced Asian man. In between the Asian man and my French friend was a woman who may or may not have been a prostitute. Prostitution is legal in Panama, and my French friend tells me that “every woman in this bar is probably a prostitute.”
He shows me various market trackers on his smartphone. “I buy on leverage,” he says. “Some days I spend thirty hours looking at the screen. If I see the market dip, even if I’ve had a lot to drink, I’ll have to go home and start trading.
“Banking is crazy here,” he says.
“So is it like Switzerland?” I ask.
“Switzerland? This is way worse than Switzerland. There are over two hundred banks in this city. There’s so much money flowing through here.”
I have no idea if what my French friend is telling me is true—and I’ll never see him again during my stay in Panama—but if he is really moving into a condo in the Trump tower, he’ll be one of the few who will actually be residing there.
The Trump tower is just one of numerous looming, mostly empty-looking towers in this city. In the evenings, the tropical darkness falls quickly, and even at seven or eight, there are many 50- or 60-story buildings that have fewer than a dozen lights on. Looking from the balcony of my Trump hotel room, the darkened Panama City skyline looks very much like a futuristic dystopia or a malevolent city-state in a sci-fi film, perhaps the metropolis in Blade Runner.
Every time I come up or down to my hotel floor, I see no one except cleaning people. The pool bar is completely empty, all day long. At dinner in the cavernous Tejas seafood restaurant, where I am served possibly the most embarrassing ceviche I’ve ever seen—rather than ceviche, it was like a Central American version of that rubbery suburban country-club classic, the shrimp cocktail—I sit at the empty long bar while diners occupy only a smattering of tables. About the only places with any activity are the fitness room, where I saw a half dozen women working out, and the infinity pool, overlooking the Pacific, where a handful of women lay out in the sun, some watching their children swim.
On the ground floor is an arcade of stores, with at least a dozen vacant spaces. Walking the arcade by day, I count nine real estate offices, two travel agencies, a Mail Boxes Etc., a beauty salon, an “Italian spa,” a jewelry store, a cigar shop, Deluca Euro Café, and a gift shop selling snacks, booze, souvenirs, and “Genuine Panama Hats.” I see no customers at any of the establishments. A sign is posted in the window of the Trump Ocean Club office that reads: “Hot Deals . . . Divorce Sale . . . Investor Must Liquidate Trump Ocean Club Portfolio . . . Take advantage of this one-time fire sale of assets in Trump Ocean Club. Prices start in the $200,000s.”
Outside, I sit on a seawall. All I can hear is the gentle ripple of the Pacific Ocean. I have the same feeling I had on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, at the golf course at Balmedie, and tasting the oaky wines in Virginia. Nothing was bad, and much of what I was experiencing was even pleasurable. But these were not great places. These places didn’t even seem like they were trying to be great. I look up at the tower itself. It’s extremely worn for a six-year-old building, with cracks, black smudges, and what looks like rust and mold. I wonder how much longer the Trump name will be emblazoned on this tower in Panama. Only six weeks from now, the Trump name will be removed from its hotel in New York’s SoHo. And in late February an ongoing legal dispute between the Trump Organization and the Panama City building’s majority owner will turn into an ugly physical altercation, with Panamanian police storming the tower.
So many people make dire warnings and predictions about Trump, about what will happen to the country once he’s finished being president, full of apocalyptic gloom and doom. But what if all that happens is that the country becomes more like his vacation properties? What happens if, after all the shouting and crying and offending and accusing and bragging and deregulating and delegitimizing, America’s reputation simply becomes defined as relentlessly mediocre? Perhaps in the great Golf Digest–like ranking of nations, the United States drops from being one of the top countries to being, say, the 46th or 54th best in the world.
I don’t have sunglasses, and I’m getting sunburned, so I wander back inside the tower. It’s lunchtime, so I take the elevator up to the BARcelona Tapas Restaurant & Bar, which, according to the Trump marketing copy, offers “an experience unparalleled in all of Latin America.” The outdoor garden patio is closed today, and inside it’s empty except for one other table of four. I order the same basic albariño I could have ordered back home, followed by a trio of pork sliders. Middling at best.
JESSICA YEN
Tributary
from Fourth Genre
When Dad was in elementary school in central Taiwan, he would sometimes recite, “Woshi Zhejiangsheng Yuyaoxian ren.” My family is from Yuyao County, Zhejiang Province, China. Xiahe Yanjia. The “village Yen,” next to the “river Xia.” I can see him now, wearing what I imagine to be the standard Taiwanese school uniform of the 1950s: blue shorts, grubby white shirt, skin dark from summers spent outside, hands clasped behind his back. He stands next to a peeling desk as he chants out his paternal lineage, the teacher ready with a ruler in case he misbehaves. According to family lore, we sprang from a well-to-do branch of the Yen family tree when a wealthy merchant married off a daughter to a man in a neighboring village. Upon hearing her new town lacked a convenient source of water, he bragged, “I’ll bring the water to you.” For her dowry, he commissioned a canal to siphon water from the neighboring river and divert it to her new home. The village was thus named Yen Family Village, and it was in this town in southeastern China that we originated.
My grandparents fled China when the Communists took over in 1949, and for years Dad longed to seek out the family village. In particular, he wished to pay tribute to the village shrine where the members of each generation are recorded. He wanted to fill in the lineage of Yens transplanted to American soil, and to inscribe female names within the shrine for the first time. He mentioned this in passing every couple of years, and as my brother, Michael, grew older, the idea took hold with him as well. Michael had romantic visions of a triumphant return to the village, and to a land none of us had known (Dad was born just as his parents left China). Yet I was the first in our nuclear family to live within geographic proximity to the family village, when I accepted a research fellowship in China in 2005, straight out of college.
My interest in Chinese began early, when my parents enrolled me in a bilingual immersion program to learn a language my mother barely knew and which we thus did not speak at home. It was the 1980s, when Japan held America’s interest and China was the boonies, and my parents were lucky to find one of the nation’s first Mandarin immersion programs, a school so young there were just 56 students spread over eight grades. Thanks in part to my early introduction to the language, I have always loved Chinese.
Yet I was also drawn to it because our household was so much more assimilated than those of my first- and second-generation Chinese American peers, and learning Chinese felt like the single component I could control. In the Bay Area it felt like everyone else’s parents cooked Chinese food, spoke to their children in Chinese, went to temple or Chinese-language church, and got their news from Chinese TV channels or newspapers. And for all that my peers scoffed at their parents for being “so Asian!” they also scorned those who were “not Asian enough,” who didn’t speak Chinese well or know which non-Americanized dishes to order. This assumption of shared experience, though intended to build
community through commonality, served to flatten the Chinese American experience, for it narrowed the archetypes and paths that were expected, or even allowed.
None of my peers understood the third-generation quandary. Once you’re several generations removed from your cultural heritage, how much connection is truly possible? Bits and pieces might be integrated into home life—a cultural event here, some ethnic food there—but for the most part the upbringing is American. I craved acceptance, and thus Chinese slowly became the center of my universe as I attempted to study my way to a cultural fluency that others osmosed from their home environment. I majored in Chinese literature and then, still seeking to become Chinese enough, I moved to China.
Thus presented with an opportunity to resurrect the dream of finding the ancestral village, Michael and Dad flew out to visit me. Although I had little interest in the village itself, by this point I was nearing one year in China and had realized my best adventures came from unexpected missions and random opportunities. A trip to the family village seemed ripe with possibility.
When I met them at the Beijing airport, I’d recently had my hair cut and styled by the neighborhood barber, and Michael had to point me out in the crowd. “Where, where?” Dad kept asking. Michael rolled his eyes at me over Dad’s head as he punched Dad in mock horror, then leaned forward to give me a hug.
This was Dad’s first time backpacking in China, so we decided to take him to the shop my Chinese friend had recommended, not the tourist trap filled with the cheap knockoff packs that most Westerners used, but a local store with Chinese brands. Dad looked around for a cab. Michael feigned embarrassment at his actions and pushed him down the road instead. “Bus or subway?” Michael asked me.