Though I mostly write about food, wine and travel, I do like to keep things interesting and take on new topics, especially when my fabulous editors at LA Confidential offer me an assignment as fun as this one: writing about the inaugural Veuve Clicquot Polo Clasic Los Angeles. Horses, champagne, international heartthrob Nacho Figueras...who could ask for more?Unfortunately, there's no link to the article, so you'll just have to go pick up this issue (it's the Man Issue, by the way), but to see the text, you can take a look below.
PONY UP
The Inaugural Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic Los Angeles brings horses, competition and champagne to the City of Angels
There’s a lot to love about a polo match. Checking out the social scene. Outrageously colorful hats (rule of thumb, ladies: choose your hat first, outfit second). Dirty jokes about mallets and balls. Pretending you’re Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman prancing around the field replacing the divots, glass of champagne in hand. Especially if that champagne is Veuve Clicquot, since the iconic house is hosting the first-ever Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic in Los Angeles on October 10.
The match will take place at Will Rogers State Historic Park in Pacific Palisades, and is free and open to the public. Headlining the event will be polo superstar, the face of Ralph Lauren’s Polo Fragrances, and all-round international heartthrob, Nacho Figueras, who first started playing when he was just a niño of nine years old in his native Argentina. “There is a long history for the game in Los Angeles,” says Figueras. “I’m looking forward to reintroducing Los Angeles fans to the sport and sharing their tradition that took shape at Will Rogers State Historic Park in 1926.”
Veuve Clicquot hosted the first Polo Classic in Manhattan two years ago, bringing the game back to the city after a 70-year absence. “Knowing I was part of bringing polo back to the city was an honor,” says Figueras. The third annual match this past June attracted over 12,000 attendees including celebrities like Russell Simmons, Ivanka Trump, Susan Sarandon, and Mayor Bloomberg.
Lest you think this is all about self-congratulatory snootery, though, the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic is always played for a good cause. For the past two years, Figueras’s Black Watch team has gone up against that other international heartthrob, England’s Prince Harry, to benefit the Sentebale charity he started with Lesotho’s Prince Seeiso to aid orphans in the African nation. The game in Los Angeles will fund preservation efforts at Will Rogers State Historic Park, the last of 22 polo grounds that once dotted the city.
All that spectatorship and philanthropy is bound to make the crowd hungry, so Veuve Clicquot has come up with a decidedly L.A. solution: food trucks. Several of the city’s favorite mobile gourmet purveyors will be adding a stop on their routes that day to feed the hungry hordes. Of course, there will also be stations around the park selling glasses of champagne and other Veuve Clicquot specialty items.
We’ll leave you with some polo trivia that will help you plan out your day (by which we mean restroom breaks) and sound cultured. Each team consists of four players. The game runs for six seven-minute periods called chukkers, with four minutes between each to change horses, and a ten-minute half-time. Just enough time to get another flute of Veuve.
For more information, visit www.vcseason.com.
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