The Back Vine

FROM FORBES LIFE

Golf pros take a swing at the wine game.

Normally you'd figure that any PGA Tour player accepting high-fives for scoring in the 90s must have had a sip of something strong. A group of current and former pros, though, have taken winemakers for playing partners and adopted the wine critics' 100-point scale as a new measure of being on par.

The idea is simple enough: Golfers bring the fame, winemakers bring the expertise and together they alchemize the mix into a golden brand. Greg Norman has been at it for nearly two decades. More recently, Arnold Palmer, Mike Weir, Nick Faldo, John Daly, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen and Gary Player have all jumped in, the latter releasing his first bottling this spring.

On the whole, connoisseurs give high marks. Els' and Norman's have received the best scores in the wine press, and other projects like Mike Weir's have had a warm reception as well.

"They have a legacy attached to them," adds Mark Russo, a longtime wine writer and golf enthusiast who founded Angel's Share, a food and wine events company in California. "If you're truly a golf aficionado, you probably don't care; it's a nice souvenir, a great keepsake and may actually increase in value with an autograph. But for the true wine geek, it's what ends up in the glass and not what's on the label that counts. It can't be just a pure business deal."

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