Monday, March 26, 7:00 p.m.
Members $85, guests $110

Muriel's Supper Club is all about style. This hot, hoppin' place at the heart of Palm Springs' downtown renaissance looks "like a colorized scene from a 1950s black-and-white movie," as Jan Sjölund of San Diego magazine put it. And in the kitchen, chef Doug Brown is turning out "Progressive American" fare with a style all his own. His all-tasting-menu format has turned cool cats into food mavens and brought the movers and shakers on the California culinary scene to his door. For this Wine Lovers' Dinner, we've paired Brown's swingin' fare with wines from Niebaum-Coppola Estate Winery.

After graduating from school, Brown donned a toque at Miami's much-lauded Mark's Place. Then he headed for Dallas, where he took over the stoves as executive chef at Nana Grill. His gorgeous cooking there earned a glowing five-star review from the Dallas Morning News. In 1999, Brown was wooed away to Palm Springs to open Muriel's. He quickly won the desert over. As Maureen Daly of the Desert Sun wrote in a four-star review, Brown is a "talented, creative" chef whose "delectable" fare is pure "culinary magic."

Niebaum-Coppola wines figure prominently on Brown's tasting menus-and no wonder. These sultry, seductively rich wines are the darlings of connoisseurs. The winery-founded by a Finnish sea captain, in 1879-has been turning out great Bordeaux-style wines for more than a century. In 1975, Francis Ford Coppola and his wife, Eleanor Coppola, bought the 1,600-acre estate and began working on their proprietary wine, Rubicon. A quarter century later, the Coppolas' dedication has paid off in spades. In addition to Rubicon, the Coppolas, general manager John Skupny, and winemaker Scott McLeod also produce a series of "family wines," including a Cabernet Franc, a Merlot, and a Chardonnay. All have attracted critical praise, but it's Rubicon that Niebaum-Coppola is most famous for. Writing in the San Francisco Examiner Magazine, Jim Wood declared that the 1988 bottling "is a lot like the famed director's work. Every detail is perfectly made."