Afterthoughts: The John Toner Wine Festival at the Ritz

I met John Toner in 1989 at the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna-Niguel, California, where he was director of marketing and sales. The occasion was the hotel’s Third Annual World of Wines Festival; and our magazine, one of several Festival co-sponsors, was there to host a luncheon honoring the winners of our annual Wine List Awards.


Three years later, the 6th World of Wines Festival

celebrates Julia. Her husband, Paul, is the artist.

Not too many locations are home to a more impressive and idyllic place for a wine festival than the Ritz, perched high atop a 150-foot bluff overlooking the Pacific and, as noted (rather snootily, I thought) in its 2011 website, “soar[ing] above the standard hotels.” From the time it opened in 1985 and for nearly 20 years after that, its allure and economic stimulus remained unmatched and unchallenged until the Montage Hotel, down the road apiece, opened in 2003 with refinement and rates that rivaled the Ritz’s. 

Toner was in charge of everything that had anything to do with the Festival. I never knew him to do anything half-assed. Not doing anything half-assed was a manifestation of the R-C slogan, “ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen,” that Toner believed in; that he and his staff executed diligently and ceaselessly day after day at the Laguna-Niguel Ritz.

As regards the Festival (our focus here) he was completely wrapped up—but never over his head—in the production of it, darting from one function room to the next, one meeting to the next making sure, as noted, that nothing half-assed would take place. I liked that. As one of the sponsors and, to boot, a luncheon host, we, like Toner, didn’t want to do anything half-assed or perceived as having done anything half-assed. Toner’s oversight was all the assurance we needed to enjoy a successful co-sponsorship. 

He understood the mix and magic of the Festival; knew what buttons to push to guarantee a sellout. We rode his tails and in doing so earned accolades for our co-sponsorship.

Unlike lots of other wine festivals where mind-numbing wine seminars that take themselves oh-so-seriously are sprinkled among cheerlessly solemn wine-tasting tutorials, the Ritz’s version combined the lure of a grown-up and toga-less bacchanal with the hassle-free appeal of unfussy seminars and tastings—a dynamic of yin-yangian scope that attracted from Orange County’s well-heeled and well-tended, not scholars and wine pedants (although some of them—tastevin-toting oenophiliacs—were there), but, as far as the eye could see, an assortment of the best-looking and best-dressed (that was the unwritten rule: you had to be one or the other—preferably both—if you had any hope of ever being admitted into the Festival) of the county swirling and swilling, out to have a good old time. That was the kind of Festival the Ritz promoted; that was the kind of Festival Toner marketed and sold: a good old time.


At the Third Annual World of Wines, from left, Ed McMahon,
Robert Mondavi, g.m. Schielein, Jeanne and me, Robin Leach.
Not in the pic? Toner. Conspicuous by his absence.
 

He did what he had to do. He took ownership of the Festival, but, as befits his persona, did not crow about it. He knew, if it were to work —if, indeed, there was to be next year and the year after that more annual bacchanalia—he had to promise everyone, not just guests, but employees, “a good old time.” He had to make sure of that. By the way, speaking of crowing, in all the years I knew Toner, I never heard him crow about anything. 

Toner’s direct report was to the legendary Henry Schielein, the hotel’s general manager and cock of the walk. Toner had taken control of the Festival; and as such and in the process was able to match, in subordinate fashion, Schielein’s influence and authority. That didn’t seem to matter to Schielein. If kudos were heaped on Toner for producing a great Festival, he was just doing his job; but doing it, Schielein wanted everyone to know, at his behest.

He, on the other hand, a master at deputizing underlings to do his bidding and making damn sure they did or else, removed himself from most of the Festival’s administrative functions to include the requisite grunge stuff (he had Toner and the people who reported to him to handle that) and decided instead that interacting and schmoozing with guests of honor and an assortment of Orange County big shots was as much an imperative to the success of the Festival as Toner’s working the nuts and bolts. He was right about that.

For, keep in mind, this was Orange County, home to some of the most affluent communities in all of California, a sexy hotbed of wealthy consumer and tourist extravagance whose hundreds of retailers —hotels and restaurants included—hustled the extravagance with very expensive products and services. Schielein knew the market, was embedded in and sucked up to it. He was g.m. and p.r. personified rolled into one. There was no one else at the hotel who could do what Schielein did. Not Toner. Not nobody.

Notice of Toner’s work eventually landed on the desks of R-C corporate, at that time (before the Marriott snatch & grab) based in Atlanta; and, when the time was right and after several baptisms by fire at Laguna-Niguel running food and beverage there and scurrying about to see all was as it should be in every other department (he had not lost his World of Wines magic), corporate decided he was ripe for the move to The Ritz, Kapalua, Maui as general manager.

The legendary Schielein today is king of all he surveys at the Balboa Bay Club and Resort, Newport Beach. If you were to ask him about John Toner, he would tell you he mentored him.

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