Wines of the Rugby World Cup: Pool A
In just over a week, England will play host to the eighth quadrennial Rugby World Cup. Twenty teams will converge on stadiums all around the country to battle it out for that prestigious top spot. And oh, just imagine how excited we were when we realised that every single one of those countries produces wine. Well, almost all of them. What follows are our recommendations (for Pool A – the rest of the teams will be coming tomorrow and next week) of what to pull out and uncork – one wine from each country competing in 2015 – whilst all your friends are opening their beers. Just ignore all of the staring. They don’t understand. But don’t worry – we do.
Pool A
Australia
This one’s easy. Australia has no shortage of fantastic wines, and everyone’s bound to have their own particular favourite. Taylors, however, a winery in the Clare Valley wine region on the southern coast of Australia (and founding member of Australia’s First Families of Wines), are the official wine partner of the Qantas Wallabies, Australia’s national rugby union team. The Clare Valley is particularly famous for its Riesling, so we recommend this TWP Riesling 2015 ($25.00). If you’re outside of Australia, though, this Wakefield Estate Chardonnay 2013 (£11.99) (Taylors goes by ‘Wakefield’ in the Northern Hemisphere for obvious reasons) will do just fine. Fruity with a cinnamon note and a creamy texture, it’ll go just fine with white meat-based dishes. And rugby.
England
Story time: During the 2011 Six Nations Campaign, Tonga’s coach David Ellis – who hails from Yorkshire – brought a bottle of wine to a meal with other national coaching staff. Marc Lievremont, at the time France’s head coach, declared it as being quite excellent in quality and queried as to where in France the wine hailed from. The wine in question? A bottle of Leventhorpe Vineyard‘s Madeleine Angevine 2009 – grown and produced in Yorkshire, just outside Leeds. Established in 1985, Leventhorpe are one of a number of vineyards which grow the Madeleine Angevine grape variety – honour them with a bottle of it. You can’t get it online, but the vineyard welcomes visitors and sells on-site. And come on, it’s not like Yorkshire is that difficult to get to.
Wales
We may be moving into tenuous territory here. Nevertheless, and surprisingly enough, Wales does produce wine – quite a lot of it, actually – though it’ll be harder to get hold of than Australian, or even English, wines. We recommend something from Llanerch Vineyard – for no reason other than it’s the closest vineyard to Cardiff, and Cardiff is the birthplace of Wales captain Sam Warburton. Once again, it’s available from the vineyard itself only, and not from stockists. To make it up to you, here’s a bonus tip: get one of these to keep your newly-bought Welsh fine wine in, so you can be in Wales drinking Welsh wine out of a Welsh rugby ball. We recognise that this may not be so appealing if you’re supporting Namibia or someone, but there you go.
Fiji
Alright, this is where it gets difficult. Fiji technically doesn’t actually produce wine. Which is to say, it doesn’t at all. Australia is nearby, so you could always just get another bottle of that Chardonnay we mentioned earlier. Or some spiced rum. Fiji do that pretty well.
Uruguay
Uruguay, however, does do wine – and some pretty good ones to boot. Uruguay’s wine tradition is a fairly established one, though only recently have the country’s wines begun to receive heavy domestic investment and international renown. To celebrate Uruguay’s rugby-based rivalry with Argentina (poor ol’ Uruguay have never actually won a match against them), we suggest something from one of the wine regions which line the Uruguayan-Argentine border: Artigas, Colonia, Soriano, Rio Negro, Payandu or Salto. Wines of Uruguay will sort you out no matter what you want, though.
Be sure to check back in the coming days for our recommendations for the three remaining pools, if only to laugh at us trying to track down Tongan wine.
