MacLachlan’s wines take center stage

It has. Once you’ve seen the name on a bottle, you’re certain never to forget it. Ironically, though, he never did act in “The Winter’s Tale.”

MacLachlan, best known for his roles in the movies “Dune” and “The Doors” and the TV shows “Twin Peaks,” “Sex and the City” and “Portlandia,” visited Houston for two days recently to hand-sell his trio of wines, the 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2015 Baby Bear Syrah and the 2018 Blushing Bear Rosé. It went well. He’s affable and easygoing. He likes people. People like him — and his wines, which have routinely garnered 90-plus scores from the critics.

“His first day out (visiting restaurants), we sold basically 1 percent of his total production,” said Dionysus Imports owner Douglas Skopp, who is bringing Pursued by Bear back into Texas after a five-year hiatus.

“Yeah,” MacLachlan responded, joking, “I make 10 cases.”

In truth, he’s up to about 1,400 after launching the business with the 2005 cabernet sauvignon. The syrah debuted with the 2008 vintage, the year his son, Callum, was born (hence the “Baby Bear” name). There’s a Blushing Bear Provençal rosé now, too, and it sold out quickly at a tasting last week. Houston Wine Merchant is the only retail shop where the Pursued by Bear wines will be available in the area.

The Wine Merchant’s prices are $35.99 for the rosé, $72.99 for the syrah and $84.99 for the cab.

“It has certainly graduated from a hobby into something more serious,” MacLachlan conceded. “Little by little, we’re growing.”

McLachlan struck up a friendship with Eric Dunham, whose Dunham Cellars was delivering head-turning Columbia Valley wines to the market early on.

“I’d wanted to serve his syrah at my wedding in 2002,” MacLachlan said, “but he didn’t have any left to sell. Still, I invited Eric to the wedding, and he came, all the way to Miami.”

They stayed in touch and, when MacLachlan eventually asked him to be his partner in Pursued by Bear, “he thought that was a great idea.”

But Dunham died in 2014, and these days MacLachlan is going it alone with Pursued by Bear while splitting his workweeks between Manhattan, where his wife lives and Callum goes to school, and Los Angeles, where he has been filming a new TV show. “Carol’s Second Act,” starring Patricia Heaton, is coming to CBS this fall.

Melissa Phillip / Staff photographer Pursued by Bear wines take their name from a stage direction in “The Winter’s Tale.”