By William Ferrall
Photography by Terry Pommett

There is truth in wine, goes the saying, but many wine enthusiasts find that friendships are uppermost when sharing a glass with others. So it goes with Yankee Candle founder Michael Kittredge, say those who know him and know his passion for wine.

Many meaningful relationships like this one are born at the table, noted Denis Toner, a longtime friend of Kittredge and the founder and president of Nantucket Wine Festival. The two met a dozen years ago when Toner was sommelier at The Chanticleer, Nantuckets renowned French restaurant in ‘Sconset. “We hit it off,” Toner recalled, “because he was passionate about wine without being pretentious.”

In fact, Kittredge was the first Nantucket homeowner to invite Wine Festival attendees into his home for what has become a central feature of the event, “Great Wines in Grand Houses.” Those dinners pair winemakers from around the globe with top chefs from distinguished local and regional restaurants for intimate meals in private island homes.

Regular strollers on North Wharf are familiar with Kittredge’s 197-foot Feadship yacht, Paraffin, which often docks there during the summer. Far fewer have seen his similarly grand “Acklandia” estate on the eastern side of Nantucket. Out there, Kittredge, along with his wife Lisa and their two young children, shares a family home set snug beside a sheltered harbor—one of several structures in the compound, including tennis courts, staff housing and multiple-stall garages for Kittredge’s antique vehicles and family cars.

On a nearby promontory with sweeping views of the horizon and Nantucket Town to the west, a large pavilion-shaped lodge features a spacious dining room, a balconied pub and lounge area, a professional gourmet kitchen and numerous guest rooms. A massive geometric dining table—its shape echoes the octagonal sides of the lodge interior—can be expanded to seat 48 guests for dinner.

On a recent visit, children’s toys were visible around the lodge’s dining room where the table was set with white linens, glassware and fresh flowers for a large dinner party that night. The Kittredge family chef busied herself in the kitchen while the butler tidied up the place settings.

Invited by Kittredge down a narrow stairway, we entered a dimly-lit underground cavern of impressive size, with a beamed ceiling and thick round pillars of polished oak. Lining the walls around half the room, behind thick glass windows, familiar cork and foil tops of wine bottles were aligned in rows and bins, stacked one on top of another from floor to ceiling. A half-dozen café tables and oak Windsor chairs offered ringside seats to view the considerable cache of wines, which numbers over 3,000 bottles with room for about 3,500, according to Kittredge.

“There’s probably not a better cellar on the island for both aesthetics and selection,” noted Toner.

His impressive vault testifies to sweet revenge for Kittredge after an incident two decades ago that launched his quest for knowledge about wine.“I was on a date at the Ritz Carleton in Boston,” Kittredge recalled. “They brought me a huge wine list, very French.” After making an uneducated guess at what might be an appropriate selection, the waiter turned up his nose at Kittredge and said, “Ah, no, no, no. That would be very devastating.”

“I swore then that I would learn all I could about wine,” said Kittredge laughing.

Michael & Lisa KittredgeUnhappily, his early ventures in wine collection turned sour as well. After he purchased a case of French Bordeaux“first growth” Chateau Haut-Brion, he proudly displayed the bottles near a sunny window, atop a rack he built himself. “The first bottle tasted pretty good,” Kittredge reminisced. “The second wasn’t quite as good, and pretty soon they were pink in color and not at all good.”

Those early missteps might be hard to imagine for someone who is now known as an expert collector of fine wines. “He has many well-chosen [wines],” explained Toner, “made up largely of the two pillars of red Bordeaux and white Burgundy. He has chosen wines that reward cellaring.”

A wine collection put together smartly and expertly by Kittredge would surprise few who know of his other successes. In 1972, he founded Yankee Candle Company in Holyoke, Massachusetts, after experimenting with candle-making and sales as a teenager. By the time he sold the company in 1998 to private equity firm Forstmann Little for a reported $500 million, Yankee Candle had become the country’s leading candle maker. Kittredge remained as chairman of the company until he retired in 2003.

Last year, Yankee Candle was acquired once again by private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners in a deal estimated worth an estimated $1.7 billion.

In the last two years Kittrege has generously shared whatever fortune he has found from those transactions. The Kittredge Center for Business and Workforce Development at Holyoke Community College opened in March of last year with help from a $1 million donation from Kittredge. In May of last year, the Kittredges pledged another $1 million to Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts, not far from their Amherst, Massachusetts, home.

Such largesse comes easily to Kittredge. At Yankee Candle, he adopted some of the most labor-friendly work practices and benefits programs in our region. “I thought of Michael early on for the ‘Great Wines’ dinners,” recalled Toner. “He was well known for his hospitality and his generosity, combined with his passion for wine.” “Michael never hesitates to bring out
something special,” said Nantucket friend Susan Hostetler. “He and Lisa are a wonderful match, and generous and fun wine collectors.”

At this year’s Nantucket Wine Festival, Kittredge’s hospitality and passion for wine take center stage at a Great Wines dinner featuring the centuries-old Italian vineyard Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi, with food by chef Daniel Bruce of Meritage at Boston Harbor Hotel. Like the other four Great Wines dinners during Nantucket Wine Festival, this one has been sold-out
for weeks.

“His cellar is not an ‘instant cellar,’” Toner noted. “It’s the product of a great collector, one like Michael who’s known for his precision and passion. He’s precise and he’s full of life.”

By William Ferrall
Photography by Jason Grow

In their just-released book “This Moment on Earth: Today’s New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future,” Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry— one of this country’s leading philanthropists on issues of health, the environment, education and the arts— found outstanding examples of those who are leading the way in a new environmental movement.

From a Cape Cod mother to an apple grower in Washington State to leaders in Washington, all are fighting air and water pollution, cancer-causing household chemicals and other “big picture” environmental issues that are affecting them, their families and their neighbors in highly personal ways.

In our last issue, N Magazine editor Bill Ferrall spoke with Heinz from her home in Sun Valley, Idaho—she and Kerry also keep homes in Washington, DC, in Boston and here on Nantucket— about how the book came about and about her unique views on today’s environmental challenges.

Asked about her own personal commitment to improving the environment, Heinz has told interviewers that she and Senator Kerry are installing energy-saving materials in their own homes, are driving more fuel-efficient vehicles and are adopting more energy efficient schedules and practices in their use of private airplanes.

Part I of our interview explored what inspired their book and the big environmental issues that Heinz believes we must deal with first. In part II of our interview, Heinz offers her thoughts on the proposed wind farm in Nantucket Sound, looks at how our political leaders have responded to news of environmental crises and suggests how each of might contribute to solutions.

This administration in Washington seems so reluctant to embrace the notion of global warming. Why do you think that is?

I think for two reasons. One is the automatic responsiveness of any power structure, whether it comes from a true belief that they know best, or if they’re making money [as things are now] working. Second is being afraid of change or being afraid of thinking differently. This is not to say that all Republicans should be blasted or that there aren’t Democrats who think the same way. There are. But it is a mindset… a behavioral mindset. My late husband was a Republican as was I, but I always thought this way and so did he. Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly harder for dialogue when you’re doing public policy, or even for people to be comfortably curious and open to producing better results. They believe—and I think it’s a mantra—that if you do well environmentally, then you’re going to do badly economically.

In fact, the opposite is the truth.We’re going to have up-front costs now because of all of the terrible things we’ve done—innocently or not—but that’s different from saying that when you do something smart, cost-effective and sustainable, that you’re hurting the economy. That’s ludicrous. That just makes no sense.

Whatever kind of administration ends up being the next one in Washington, what do you think are the first two or three initiatives they ought to address with these kinds of things?

First of all, the most urgent is to do everything we can about global climate change. Incentivize academia to design the kinds of products that we need, to mitigate and adapt to the future.

In some cases, we have to look at assessing the costs of policies that help people who are in potentially disastrous areas. We’re not Holland, but some places in America are like Holland. So are we going to determine that it’s just too costly to do anything and help them move somewhere else and let those lands go? Or do [we develop] some newfangled dike systems that really work and that really are worth investing in? For the private sector, insurance companies and so forth, there are mechanisms that can help people make choices. I remember working on this at the Heinz Center about seven years ago. We’d done a couple of books on marine and river ecosystems, with the support and interest of insurance companies who are getting battered in terms of insuring houses and properties in bad trajectories. They said, ‘We can’t afford these cyclones and hurricanes much more because they’re too big and they cost too much, so what can we do? Do we just refuse to insure these people, or do we hike the premiums?’ They wanted the science. They wanted to understand what was coming down; they wanted to know.

So that’s a private sector source of funding for this?

That’s a private-sector source. The Heinz Center is multi-sector—academia, NGOs [non-governmental organizations], public policy people and businesses.We try to look at it all so that the outcome of a study is acceptable by all of the sometimes conflicting parties.

Do you think that Senator Kerry is going to push for higher CAFÉ standards [for lower pollutant auto emissions] in the near future?

He’s had two bills on that. He had a bill with [Senator] McCain about seven years ago and then he had another bill again with McCain. The auto industry and the autoworkers—at least the eadership—were not happy with that. I think it’s not the ultimate solution, but it’s part of a package that is part of the solution. One thing isn’t going to do it now. Why shouldn’t Americans who live in cities want good, efficient small cars? They should be given the choices. But they [automakers] didn’t want efficiencies, and now we’re paying for it in the marketplace.We’re paying for it everywhere. It’s a needless arrogance. That’s what it is. It’s arrogance.

Is the wind farm in Nantucket Sound a possible solution to some of this stuff?

I don’t know where in Nantucket Sound [is best] because I’m not an Army Corps of Engineers person. But I think we have to use wind, especially if it makes a huge savings. To have a wind farm just to have it as a good example is one thing. To have wind truly as a [major]source of energy, that makes a huge difference.

Of course, I ask you that question because Senator Kerry has been reluctant to come out strongly in favor of or against it.

He is absolutely for wind. He wants to study the regional maps up and down our coast. He wants to see how viable it is to use and how much of it we can get. What I have found sad in this whole big discussion of the wind farm was that this has been an isolated question, not a geographically-rich question that showed volume. It became a turf war in a schoolyard rather than [a] much bigger and important [issue]. So [as for] the schoolyard part of it, I’m not an expert.

Of course, I could argue that those of us who are in favor of the wind farm see the bigger picture.

I know they see the bigger picture. But the case wasn’t fought that way. The discussions on the Hill weren’t about where you can go. It was just a local thing. That’s how people viewed it. Some say why make such a big deal out of one place? I think it may or may not be the most perfect place for the people who live here. It may be the only place feasible in terms of cost, transportation,etcetera.

I am for wind energy and other alternative sources. But I am not an expert. I kept asking the Corps of Engineers what can be done and what other alternative sites are there? I tried to figure out new blade technology. I know UMass is now doing some new blade technology work.

I never got a reasonable understanding of whether one could, say, put it north of Block Island or between Block Island and Nantucket. This is what I’d like to know. There may not be anywhere else. I understand why it would be cheaper to do it there, because it’s shallow.

Ideally, yes, I’d like to see one. I wouldn’t mind having one at Coatue. I think it would be pretty. My first consideration would be why not other places? Why isn’t anybody else fighting for other places?

If a reader wanted to donate a hundred bucks to an environmental cause, where would you say they should donate it?

It depends on the person. If you’re living in a community where something terrible is going to happen like a plant that is going to really offend a lot of people—meaning that the outcomes are going to be terrible whether it be air or waste or whatever—maybe use that hundred dollars to afford a babysitter while you go and stand by your position. Go complain. Go visit your local government. Leverage your voice with other people. Maybe that’s what it takes in that particular case.

In another case, I’d use the hundred dollars to make a difference by buying some compact fluorescents. Put them in the places where you read most, in the kitchen or the family room. That’s a big contribution. If you can change those things up front, you’re going to earn money back.

Since we’re on Nantucket, what if you had a million bucks to contribute?

Hopefully you’d have one or two particular interests. It might be the oceans or fisheries. I’d help with people doing a lot of work on that. One of the problems right now [is that] the state of the oceans and the fisheries is really devastating. I hardly eat fish anymore because I just can’t. I eat it as a treat, and that’s tough for the fishing industry.They more than anybody else know that fisheries are damaged.

Have you two had any thoughts or conversations about supporting the next presidential candidate?

No. I mean, we don’t have anybody to support yet. John might decide in the primaries, but he’s not there yet. I want to see some real discussion on environmental issues.

Did you think that came up enough in the last campaign?

The press didn’t cover it. We spoke about it every single speech: energy and fuel efficiencies, clean air, clean water and health and farming practices. Every single speech. Mercifully Al Gore’s film has helped. You know, we live in a Hollywood-ized world. It’s sad and dangerous, but that’s where we are. Of course, right now, the press is covering global climate change because it’s so obvious.

By Evan Williams
Photography by Nathan Coe

If you’re in the market for antiques, home furnishings or additions to a growing collection, you’ll find enormous storehouses to explore just off Interstate 95 in southeast Connecticut.

At least a dozen warehouse-style repositories there have become fertile hunting grounds for interior designers, homeowners and collectors in search of up-scale home décor. In each of a dozen large “group dealer” antique galleries – some large enough to house the quare footage and total inventory of Nantucket’s antiques stores combined – browsers might encounter formal period furnishings, Chinese porcelains, American pottery, vintage linens, works by leading American artists and one-of-a-kind custom designs.

Connecticut AntiquesAt the Antiques & Artisans Center, nearly 200 dealers show surprisingly in-depth collections, including antique sofas, chairs, desks, armoires, books and prints, collectibles and sought-after examples of 20th century modern furniture. At the nearby Hiden Galleries, with a recently opened annex dubbed Hiden II, over 175 dealers show American and Continental furniture, lighting and Oriental items. Several dealers highlight Art Deco-era furnishings as well.

A day spent browsing in those two galleries alone might suffice, but nearby in the well worn warehouse district along Stamford’s Canal Street, almost a dozen other dealers inhabit old manufacturing spaces. Most of those dealers, though, will be relocated in coming months, as a huge urban renewal project is set to raze the area.

With its less formal but also immense inventory, the Stratford Antique Center draws customers to its “Big Blue Building” about a half hour north of Stamford, also just off Interstate 95. There, items range from vintage advertising prints to country primitives to smaller collectibles and early 20th century reproductions of period furnishings. A recent walk through their dealer’s booths revealed a Victorian-era parlor suite, collectible toys and dolls, as well as a dramatic Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus banner.

Just off Exit 7, I-95 South

The Antique & Artisan Center
69 Jefferson St.
Stamford, CT. 06906
203-327-6022
www.stamfordantique.com

Hiden Galleries I & II
481 Canal Street
Stamford, CT 06906
203-323-9090
www.hidengalleries.com

Just off Exit 31, I-95 South

Stratford Antique Center
400 Honeyspot Road
Stratford, CT 06497
203-378-7754
www.stratfordantique.com

By Evan Williams
Photography by Nathan Coe

You might expect that a place like Nantucket, with its history of international influence since white settlers landed here almost 250 years ago, would be a rich treasure trove for antiques shoppers. Today, none of the island’s three-dozen antique stores fail to disappoint “antiquers” on the hunt.

From record-breaking auction prices set locally for nautical items to outstanding folk art to vintage tourism memorabilia, island antiques dealers offer many prized objects. Rafael Osona, Nantucket’s only full-time auctioneer, has set new highs for sales of folk art paintings, scrimshaw and lightship baskets, with one unusual basket hitting $115,000 in 2005. Nina Hellman, the island’s renowned dealer in maritime artifacts, regularly offers singular examples of whalebone carvings and whaling-era documents. Wayne Pratt Antiques often exhibits some of the finest-known examples of early American furniture.

But, that rarified world of high-end transactions long ago loosened up on Nantucket, which now probably has its largest number of moderately-priced shops for neophyte collectors and for those on a budget. And many dealers now mix in contemporary art and decorative accessories with traditional antiques.

This and that

More and more, dealers are trying to present “a little bit of something for all,” as Nantucket Country owner Cam Dutton characterized her store’s offerings. Dutton, like most other island dealers, has developed special collections over her dozen years of doing business here. Her inventory of early American quilts and coverlets exceeds any other locally. Dozens of vintage signs and painted wood objects line her store shelves, with antique toys, dolls and out-of-print books mixed in on two floors of display space.

Out on Old South Road, Jason Ross at Nantucket Stock Exchange has amassed an impressive array of traditional antiques with vintage maps, art and tourist-trade items, and he’s done it in only five years. A similar mix – along with high quality lightship baskets, folk art and shell art – puts Forager House Collection among leading dealers of its kind nationally. Forager House has won fame for its extensive collection of memorabilia designed by Tony Sarg, the early 20th century illustrator and marionette creator who lived seasonally on Nantucket and about whom the Nantucket Historical Association plans to mount a major exhibition in 2010, with Forager co-founder and owner George Korn.

Specialty dealers

For more traditional island dealers, specializing deeply in one area has garnered them success. Up on North Liberty Street, Val Maitino Antiques has become a premier regional retailer of antique and vintage lighting, with a vast inventory of figural iron tabletop lamps and nautical-themed early American-style fixtures for both interior and exterior uses.

You’re unlikely to see many objects of vintage modern design in Nantucket’s stores, but dealers are increasingly adding modern art and accessories into their retail mix. Francis X. Ferrall of John Rugge Antiques on India Street said he stocks “everything” including contemporary paintings. European Traditions, the Straight Wharf gallery and shop that imports European country and formal furniture, exhibits work by longtime Nantucket artist Paul Longnecker alongside modernist paintings by Provincetown artist Michael McGuire. Besides period furniture and 17th , 18th and 19th century engravings in her shop, Janis Aldridge offers modern obelisks, objets d’art and delicate, framed paper sculptures by island artist Mellie Cooper. Their eye candy inventory aside, many island dealers stress the human side of doing business in this small town setting and their shared excitement with customers for finding something special.

“This is like being on a giant treasure hunt,” said Dutton at Nantucket Country. “I love finding things and meeting people who sometimes collect the oddest things. It’s a very personal business.”
The personal involvement might be key to a shop’s success on Nantucket. “We’ve served three generations at this point,” noted Claire Maitino, co-owner with her husband Michael Maitino of Val Maitino Antiques. “I’ve been here 40 years, and the shop was here before that.”

By Jeannette Garneau
Photography by Terry Pommett

You might expect that any restaurant proprietor or chef would commit to quality or achieve it through experience as a way of ensuring success. At Water Street, the eatery founded last year by four Nantucket restaurant veterans, the chef-owner couples launched their venture with a singular ardor for excellence and healthy food.

“We wanted it as organic as it possibly could be,” averred Amy Nelson, wife of chef Robert Nelson. “We were after quality, locally-grown and without hormones or additives.” Along with chef Jason Carroll and his wife Mallary Alfano Carroll, the foursome has put nearly a year of being in business under their collective apron, with Robert and Jason taking on kitchen duties while Amy and Mallary oversee dining room operations as hostesses.

Like their philosophy of choosing healthy local foods and cooking with organic in mind, the working relationship among the four has developed in similar affirmative fashion. According to Amy Nelson, “the boys,” as she called her husband Robert Nelson and co-chef Jason Carroll, have “learned along the way to put out great quality.”

The six guests at a recent Water Street dinner, arranged with help from N Magazine,would likely agree. Each is part of a chef operator couple that owns and operates some of Nantucket’s finest eateries. Amanda Lydon and Gabriel Frasca took over the helm last year at Straight Wharf Restaurant. Susan Handy and Jeff Wooster are founders of Black-Eyed Susan’s and this year took on duties at The Chanticleer in ‘Sconset. Peter and Wendy Janelle opened their year-round 56 Union seven years ago. All are accomplished participants in what Fodor’s travel guides described as Nantucket’s “constantly expanding and improving” restaurant scene, where “‘world class’ would be no exaggeration.

Happy to serve

Because Nantucket chefs have earned such distinction on and off the island, we asked the professional chefs gathered at Water Street to share what they look for when evaluating a restaurant. What brings them back to any one of the many dining rooms they visit?Water Street

“I look most for effort,” said Water Street’s Jason Carroll. “The staff should be welcoming and attentive. You should feel that they are happy to be serving you. Most importantly, there should be effort on the part of the kitchen staff to put the best product possible on the plate, no matter whether that product is French fries or foie gras.

Straight Wharf’s Amanda Lydon echoed that sentiment. “I’m in a wonderful restaurant when I’m greeted by someone who’s clearly enjoying their job, who makes eye contact, who smiles with real pleasure at guests walking through the door,” she said. “That energy is contagious. When everyone around you is radiating contentedness, how can you have anything but a wonderful time?”

Maybe pros such as these take for granted the creativity of the kitchen and the level of skill necessary to bring a plate of great food to diners’ tables. Or maybe they know that diners expect a level of accomplishment if they’re ever going to come back. “People go out to eat to get away from the everyday stuff,” agreed Wendy Janelle of 56 Union. “They should feel special.”

Like their colleagues, Amy Nelson and the crew at Water Street plan to continue making their guests feel special. They’ve expanded their sources for organically-grown local and regional foods. They’re exploring new wines and new menu additions to their offerings. More and more dinner guests who come through their doors are finding the modern, romantic interior to their liking. Well-known island bartender Graedon Ambrose has taken command of the intimate upstairs bar.

“Year number two should bring us an ease with what we do best,” promised Amy Nelson