大好之年1964

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones make their U.S. album debuts, Muhammad Ali is crowned heavyweight champion of the world and Tokyo hosts the Olympics. Meanwhile, Hong Kong and France are producing showstoppers of their own

MAGGIE CHEUNG
ACTRESS

It's not easy to be everyone's girl next door in Hong Kong, a city that's all 40-story housing blocks. Yet Maggie Cheung has long held a monopoly on hearts in her homeland-and beyond. That one of the world's leading Chinese beauties was actually raised in England only makes Cheung more emblematic of the ex-colony's cross-purpose passions. It would be easy to crown this runner-up in the 1983 Miss Hong Kong pageant as just another beauty. But that would ignore a lifetime of unconventional choices: trying on vampire as an exotic vamp in 'Irma Vep,' being the offhandedly elegant, bored housewife in Wong Kar-wai's iconic 'In the Mood for Love' and the drug addict in 'Clean' (which won her the Cannes best actress award in 2004). Having appeared in a mere seven films over the past decade and relocated to Beijing, Cheung is now composing scores for film. Like many a female scene-stealer, she gets too little credit for fierce intelligence. No matter what, she's still that girl next door-only gone global.
-John Krich

VOUVRAY
'LE MONT' MOELLEUX

When Victor Huet's son Gaston trudged 200 miles back to Vouvray, France, after the WWII liberation, he found his father's vineyard in devastation. Gaston healed himself, healed the vines and went on to create the most famous domaine in that cave-carved, limestone-rich region. Grapes grown here are not the semillon of the more famous (and expensive) Bordeaux, but chenin blanc. 1964 turned out to be a small vintage, spectacular for sweeter wines, which chenin freaks snapped up. Most are now sleeping in collectors' cellars, occasionally popping up at auction for $650 a bottle. This bottle was named for Le Mont, a 17-acre parcel clinging to the slopes of the Loire river. These are stony soils with little clay. The resulting wines have a bracing acidity and ample fruit, a combination that makes them almost indestructible. One drinker described the treat as having the smell of cleanscrubbed skin, sandy earth, stone fruit and raw almonds, with the aroma of marzipan. In other words, a classic, old, complete, mouthwatering Huet.
-Alice Feiring