Lucky you, Thirsty Reader: this is the last day for an entire year that you’ll be threatened with an-other What Wine for the Super Bowl? article.

There have been dozens already published this sea-son alone, and I encourage you to ignore all of them. Some are clearly written out of desperation (those will be the ones taking their inspiration from teams colors or geographic origins or similar nonsense that is, as Henry Ford used to say, irrevelant); others are written in deadly earnest and are invariably deadly. This intends not to be among them.

So mere moments from now I’ll be in the rec room of the Bar None Ranch, an open-enrollment spa and dude spread of no repute, and I’ll be joined by some lit’ry pals, including Garçon McCullers, the strug-gling novelist and waitron; Captain Rehab, arche-type of the hard-drinking American novelist; and—visiting from Old Blighty—H. Rider Laggard, the pussy-footing explorer and author of timid adven-ture books for shy boys. We will be drinking beer.

image Football is a violent game in which mobs of enormous over-weight men in body armor beat the bejeezus out of each other in vast arenas, accompanied by the savage cries and hortatory howls of even larger mobs, a.k.a. spectators. If there’s any-thing in there that strikes you as being consonant with wine, I’d be interested to know what it is. Until then, I’m laying it down without hope of appeal that until further notice you should forget any thoughts about wine and proceed to pop yourselves a bevy of longnecks as the only allowable choice. Indeed, most contact sports seem to demand beer. Wine seems utterly out of place save when it’s time to spray a few flagons of bubbly round the winning team’s crazed and testosterone-fueled locker room.

It’s not as if the craft-beer movement hasn’t brought us a plenitude of top-drawer suds, the producers of which deserve our encouragement and custom.

Blue Point Toasted, Saranac’s Adirondack Lager, Sam Adams, Brooklyn,  Sierra Nevada, Magic Hat,
Boulevard Brewing, Harpoon, Full Sail, Anchor Steam, Shipyard—these all are a far cry from the days of Rheingold Extra Dry, of which the best part was the annual Miss Rheingold contest.

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You want a wine sport? Try yachting. Or polo. And now . . . it’s fill ‘er time!

© 2011 Bill Marsano