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Quick: Name the largest golf resort in the Northeast.

Hint: It’s perhaps best known for having one of the

largest wine cellars in the country.

Need another hint? It’s located only 55 miles from

New York.

The answer, if you’re still searching, is Crystal

Springs Resort. For those who knew that fact, we’ll be

sure to drink a toast to you the next time we visit that

massive wine cellar.

Crystal Springs used to go by the tagline “So much

so close,” a reflection of its late owner, Gene Mulvihill,

who had a grand vision for the resort and the means

to make it happen.

“Gene thought a lot like (Walt) Disney in terms

of building things others wouldn’t think of,” said Art

Walton, the resort’s vice president.

That tradition has continued in the 3½ years since

Mulvihill’s death. It would require weeks to sample all

of the activities at the year-round resort, which spans

more than 4,000 acres in the mountains of northern

New Jersey. The list of amenities keeps growing. This

month Crystal Springs is opening the Clay and Oak

Sporting Club. One suspects Mulvihill would have

approved and perhaps even dipped into the wine

cellar for something special to mark the occasion.

Mulvihill, who made his fortune on Wall Street,

was a go-big-or-go-home kind of guy who set about

to remake this part of the Kittatinny Mountain Range

into a year-round destination. At one point, he even

boasted that it’s “gonna be better than Disney World.”

“He was very passionate about everything,” said

Susanne Lerescu, the resort’s sommelier. “Everything

he did, he went all the way.”

He bought Crystal Springs in 1995, and over the

next six years built three golf courses, including

Ballyowen, No. 1 among Golfweek’s Best Courses

You Can Play in New Jersey, and Wild Turkey, No. 10

on that list.

The courses check off all of the boxes. If you’re in

the mood for a notoriously difficult test, there’s the

resort’s original course, Crystal Springs Golf Club,

which Mulvihill inherited. Walton jokes that “there are

more moguls on Crystal Springs than on the ski area.”

Ballyowen is the sort of trophy course that will

attract players from long distances. It’s a treeless,

links-inspired, heathland design where you have

the option of walking with caddies.

Black Bear, built in 1996, and Wild Turkey are

more resort-friendly, though Wild Turkey has two of

the most memorable par 3s on property: the seventh,

which plays across a quarry, and the long, downhill

10th. If you just want to knock it around, the 90-

At Crystal Springs, the fun starts with 90 holes and 75,000 bottlesBy Martin Kaufmann // Hamburg, N.J.

Crystal Springs Resort’s Ballyowen Golf Course

STELLAR CELLAR

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hole lineup includes two nine-holers, Cascades and the

family-friendly Minerals, complete with four-person

carts. There also is an 18-hole putting green woven along

the exterior of the 220-room Grand Cascades Lodge,

which sits on a bluff above Wild Turkey.

The cellar of the lodge originally was intended to

house the resort’s golf carts.

“That all got set aside for Gene’s Bordeaux room,”

Walton said. “And then he just kept going and going.”

It started with 4,000 bottles from Mulvihill’s personal

collection, and now encompasses a square acre of

underground storage. The cellar, a labyrinthine cave

with nine temperature-controlled rooms and two

intimate dining areas, once held as many as 135,000

bottles, though some of the collection was auctioned

last year. These days guests somehow manage to make

do with some 75,000 bottles, still one of the largest

collections in the

country. It includes

wines that date to

the 19th century;

the most expensive

bottle is a Chateau

Latour, Pauillac 1900

Magnum priced at

$57,600.

Who would have

guessed? Certainly

not Lerescu.

She recalls that when Mulvihill predicted that wine

enthusiasts would seek out the resort, she thought,

In Hamburg, New Jersey? Really? “I couldn’t see it,”

she said.

Now she gives daily tours of the wine cellar, teaches

wine seminars on the first Sunday of each month, and

each spring assists Robby Younes, the vice president

of hospitality and wine director, in putting on the New

Jersey Food & Wine Festival, which attracts prominent

chefs and oenophiles. In the evenings, Lerescu presides

over the oh-so-precise wine pairings at Restaurant

Latour, where, she notes, there is a different glass for

each of the 38 varietals to best showcase each wine. The

wine list, presented to guests on iPads, is updated daily.

Mulvihill initially planned to use the Latour space as

his office, but in another inspired move, he put his guests

first. Now, if you can score one of the 13 tables at Latour,

Susanne Lerescu jokes that Crystal Springs’ Bordeaux room is her ‘nursery.’

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24 GOLFWEEK.COM • MAY 23, 2016

you can enjoy five- and seven-course pairings

while watching the sunset through the westward-

facing, floor-to-ceiling windows.

The resort’s total wine collection is valued

at roughly $15 million. That Bordeaux room so

beloved by Mulvihill? There’s probably $5 million

of inventory just in there. (This can make for an

expensive evening. Lerescu said that one recent

nine-person party ordered nine bottles of century-

old Bordeaux. Final dinner tab: $127,000.)

“These are my babies,” Lerescu said, standing

watch over some 50 six-liter Imperials of

Bordeaux, each of which is the equivalent of eight

750-ml bottles. “Sometimes I call this my nursery.”

Mulvihill’s influence continues to be felt. Per

his mandate, Lerescu still seeks out wines that

have earned 100-point ratings.

“We always will buy the great Bordeaux,” she

said. “We always buy the great Burgundies.”

At one point, she had as many as 195 100-point

bottles, though Mulvihill never was shy about digging

into that stash. Lerescu said that he personally drove

up the cost of his favorite Bordeaux – 1982 Pichon-

Lalande, Pauillac – because he served it so often, at

more than $1,000 per bottle.

“There were dinners when I thought, ‘This is too

much of a good thing,’ because he opened so many

100-point wines in one night,” Lerescu said.

Those bottles typically run into the thousands of

dollars, but Lerescu also takes pride in finding values

for guests. The wine list includes highly regarded

Bordeaux and other varietals for less than $100. She

also seeks out wines from emerging regions, such

as pinots from Oregon. And she tries to demystify

the experience for guests who might be overwhelmed

by the cellar and the resort’s expansive wine lists.

“Some people take it too seriously,” she said.

“You should just have fun with wine.” Gwk

A sampling of Bordeaux

wines in Crystal Springs Resort’s

wine cellar

Crystal Springs Golf Club

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