Can fine wine and professional sport be a perfect pairing?
While it’s widely held that binge drinking is detrimental to a fitness regime, record-breaking former American football quarterback Drew Bledsoe believes that fine wine and professional sport form a perfect pairing.
In the UK this month for the NFL London Games, Bledsoe offers a refreshing and hopeful view of the role of wine in the lives of high-profile sporting figures, and rejects the notion that enjoying the drink could have had a negative impact on his health and performance, when speaking to the drinks business as part of an exclusive interview on 21 October.
Indeed, Bledsoe played in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons, setting a number of records, many of which remain unbroken despite ending his professional sporting career almost 20 years ago.
Looking back, he said that there was a culture of consuming great wines with food among his teammates when he was playing American football, and such was his love of wine, on retiring from the NFL in 2007, he set up his own winery within a mile of where he grew up, which is Walla Walla – the wine region straddling the states of Washington and Oregon.
The legendary sportsman also recorded that such appreciation for fine wine in the sporting world continues today, and may have even increased.
As you can listen to in the db podcast, when asked if there was a culture of drinking fine wine among NFL players, Bledsoe said not only that “there was”, but also, “it has gotten more so now.”
Although he joked that sometimes very fine wines were drunk to show off, he said that “there was a group of 8 to 10 of us that actually really appreciated a good bottle of wine,” and noted that professionals in other sports, such as basketball, also took wine seriously.
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Furthermore, he suggested that wine appreciation was good for sporting figures, as it made them less likely to drink just to get drunk.
He said, “I think wine should be classified differently to other alcohol beverages – it’s something that you’re drinking for the pleasure and the taste and for how it works with your food, rather than just trying to catch a buzz.”
He added, “I almost feel like wine should be reclassified as food.”
Continuing he said, “It’s part of your meal, and I think from that standpoint, athletes look at it as something that’s not detrimental to their health. It’s actually something that, in my view at least, can be positive – you can still have something to complement your meal, but you’re not out drinking a bunch of whiskeys, 20 beers or whatever; you just have a couple of glasses of wine with your dinner so you don’t feel you’re letting the team down with your fitness regime by drinking wine with food.”
As db has previously noted, Bledsoe is making a range of wines from Walla Wally, including a pair of top expressions comprising a varietal Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon called Doubleback – in reference to Bledsoe’s decision to “double back” to his hometown of Walla Walla.
He produces further wines in the same region, as well as more recently Oregon too, under the brand Bledsoe McDaniels, to represent the involvement of winemaker Josh McDaniels, also a Walla Walla native.
Importing and distributing Bledsoe’s wines in the UK is ex-England rugby international Simon Halliday, who founded The Sporting Wine Club in 2017 – selling wines from famous sporting figures to the trade and consumers.
Halliday told db this month that Bledsoe’s wines are now being served in the UK at Wembley and Emirates stadia as well as private members’ wine club 67 Pall Mall.
