“Believe it or not,
football players all want to be wine drinkers.”
-Daryn Colledge, Arizona Cardinals
offensive lineman & winemaker.
Start with three NFL football players weighing over a half
ton combined; sprinkle in a business venture and good-natured rivalry with a
Hall-of-Fame caliber defensive back; add some cabernet sauvignon grapes. Mix
well. What have you got?
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Jason Spitz, Daryn Colledge, and Tony Moll -- the Three Fat Guys (courtesy threefatguyswine.com) |
Three Fat Guys Cabernet
Sauvignon.
The aforementioned large individuals are Daryn Colledge,
Tony Moll, and Jason Spitz, all current NFL players. The three were drafted in
2006 by the Green Bay Packers out of Boise State, Nevada, and Louisville
respectively. A combination of talent and injuries landed all three in the
starting lineup for ten games as rookies. The seeds of a lifelong friendship
friendship were sown. And over a conversation at Milwaukee steakhouse “Carnivore,”
so was a different project…
"We'd had a few drinks, a huge dinner and we were all
talking about being fat. Somewhere along the line, the idea came out and the
name followed. The details after that are a bit cloudy," Daryn Colledge declared.
I had the chance to chat with Colledge for a few minutes as
he took a break from his daughter Camryn tugging on his beard.
“Wine kind of snuck up on me. We did it initially just for
ourselves and to be able to give some away as gifts. But people we knew who
really knew wine said, ‘This is really good. You should try to sell it! It kind
of went from there,” said Colledge.
One of Colledge’s teammates in Green Bay was Charles
Woodson, future Hall-of-Fame cornerback – himself a winemaker. At a party
sometime after the aforementioned carnivorous feast, they cornered Woodson and
his winemaker Rick Ruiz. Some negotiations ensued and Three Fat Guys emerged.
To Colledge’s credit – he didn’t rise to the bait when I
asked him who made better wines: offensive or defensive guys. He chuckled and
said, politically, “You know that we’re each going to argue for their own side.
Charles Woodson’s legacy and talent speaks for itself, and he’s been making the
stuff a little longer than we have. He makes really good juice, and I like to
think that we’re right there.”
Three Fat Guys released its first vintage in 2007. That was
after the triumvirate’s second season in the league. I noted that they all must
have been 24 or 25 years old. I was impressed. At 24, I thought Rolling Rock
was high-end stuff. I asked Colledge how he got into wine so early. “It has a
lot to do with the culture of the business that I’m in. In the offseason, you end
up doing a lot of charity auctions and the like, and wine gets served. That’s
what really got me into it. Then throw in Tony. He grew up in Sonoma, so he was
around it as a kid. So when we’re over at his place, you know that’s what you’re
getting.”
Colledge gave the nod to Moll for “best palate” honors. “Tony
and Jason probably argue over the flavors more. I have to give the nod to Tony,
though – he’s just been around it so long. He leads wine tastings in the
offseason when he goes home and such.”
Three Fat Guys was good enough to send along a couple of
samples. The bottles themselves are heavy enough to register as deadly weapons.
These bottles have the deepest punt I’ve ever run across, perhaps as a tip of the
cap to their special teams brethren. (WineSpeak: the “punt” is the dent on the
bottom of the bottle.)
The 2008 was a different story. Nose is still full of vanilla
and dark fruit, but it’s more balanced with some fresh cut wood and earthy
scents. The flavor was much more balanced. Vanilla, blackberry, and oak all
mingle very pleasantly. The finish of even tannin, vanilla, and fruit was much
longer than the ‘07. This one pushed the right buttons for me.
Since many California cabs are fairly consistent from
vintage to vintage, I asked Colledge how much tweaking they’d done with the mix.
“We do a fair bit of sampling during the process to try to find what works
best. We’re split on the vintages – Jason really likes the ’07 and Tony & I
prefer the ’08. We offer up our ideas and our preferences, but the real genius
lies with our winemakers: Rick and Gustavo (Gonzales). They’re amazing. Rick
& Gustavo both say that the ’09 is going to knock it out of the park. We’re
excited, to say the least.”
I asked Colledge about his suggestions for food pairings. “Well,
you know I’m an offensive lineman, so I’m pretty much a traditionalist. Steak
and potatoes are my thing, and I love it with them.”
I’d already broken into these wines before I spoke with him.
I’d made this pretty tasty Asian beef &
basil stew over some rice noodles a few nights before. The suggested
pairing was a cabernet, so we used that as an excuse for our side-by-side. Both
wines went well with this particularly yummy dish, but the ’08 was a
particularly luscious pairing. The flavors ricocheted perfectly.
The three have all moved on from Green Bay. Colledge is now
with the Arizona Cardinals. Moll is with the San Diego Chargers and Spitz is
with the Jacksonville Jaguars. The wine helps their bond strong. “I like to
think it’s one piece of what holds us together. We really forged a great
friendship in Green Bay. We’ve all gotten older and gotten married. We’ve all
got kids or kids on the way. But we always make sure that we take at least one
trip together to California each year to celebrate the new vintage.”
Since “wine tasting” and “testosterone” generally don’t
occupy the same sentence, I asked Colledge as we were wrapping up how his
teammates reacted to his hobby. Are they into it? Do they give him shit?
Colledge laughed: “You might not think it, but football players all want to be
wine drinkers. They want to be able to do the business thing and seem
sophisticated. But as for my teammates, they’ll tell me that they’re into it, but
I know most of them just want free wine. So, we drop a couple of free bottles
on them, then make them go through the distributor and jack up the price once
we’ve reeled them in.”
A tried-and-true business model, to be sure. If the 2009
vintage makes the same sort of leap that the 2008 did, they’re certainly on to
something. They also are in the planning stages for a “Skinny” chardonnay with
their wives as consultants. For more information, you can check out http://www.threefatguyswine.com and/or
follow on Twitter at @3FatGuysWine
(A final tangential observation: With the advent of fantasy
football, offensive linemen have become the last players hometown fans can root
for unreservedly. While a sizable number of “home team” fans in the stands may
be rooting for an opposing running back to have a 3 TD day or an enemy
linebacker to have multiple sacks, few leagues give fantasy points when a play
happens the way it should.)
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