Hump Day Hodgepodge: Rupert Murdoch

Somehow Your Mama missed all the hullaballo and brouhaha about legally embattled bazillionaire Rupert Murdoch revealing via his Twitter feed that he'd snatched up Moraga Vineyards in the uppity L.A. community of Bel Air, one of the few commercial vineyards in the City of Los Angeles. It's not yet been revealed how much Mister Murdoch paid for the spread that was last listed for $29.5 millon.

The octogenarian media tycoon reportedly became interested in the vineyard estate that sprawls over rolling hillsides in the heart of an affluent enclave after reading about it in the Wall Street Journal, which, of course, he owns.

As was noted in Mister Murdoch's tweet, the approximately 16-acre estate and its 13-ish acres of grapevines has been owned since 1959 by Tom Jones. No, children, not the famously hirsute Welsh singer Tom Jones but rather the much more staid aeronautical engineer Tom Jones who, until the late 1980s, was the CEO of aircraft manufacturer Northrop Corporation for 30 years.

The vineyard property occupies a former horse ranch once owned by Victor Fleming, the stuntman turned Oscar winning director of Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.

Although the gated estate includes a roomy 7,724 square foot single story residence with three bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms, plus an additional two bedroom guest house and 4,400 square foot office building, it seems highly unlikely Mister Murdoch and his much younger, wickedly smart and fearsomely feisty wife Wendi Deng will move in since they already own an even more spectacular, horseshoe-shaped Wallace Neff-designed hacienda style mansion perched on a snaking ridge line high above Beverly Hills.

listing photos: Surterre Properties