Page 84 - Wine Spectator (January 2020)

WS: What’s one thing you learned on the field that’s essential in the

winemaking business?
DM: Go deep or go home. With wine and football, or whatever it may
be in life, it’s about having passion for it. I have passion for football still
to this day, and I have passion for what we’re doing with our wine at
Passing Time.

DH: I would say that the competitive side is great, but I think what made
the best teams that I’ve played on is relationships. At the beginning, I
don’t think I understood the moving parts in the wine business and all
these neat people I met over time, the barrel reps, the farmers. Much like
in football, it’s about those relationships and those teams that were close

and got along and made it work. Those were the teams that won. —S.Z.

CHARLES WOODSON

The defensive veteran’s Intercept and Charles

Woodson Wines span California AVAs

akland Raiders and Green Bay Packers jack-of-all-plays Charles
Woodson caught attention as a football talent early, in his high
Oschool years, but he also started making wine young. The nine-
time Pro Bowler fell in love with Napa Valley’s wine scene when he
was in training camp there, and in 2001, at 25, he tackled his first

barrel, a Merlot, with a winemaker friend at Robert Mondavi. In
2005, he went commercial with TwentyFour, a high-end label fo-
cused on Cabernet from near Calistoga, later called Charles Wood-
son Wines. Tasting Room24 in Napa, which Woodson describes as

a “wine sports bar,” followed. “Drinking wine at a football game,
now it’s an accepted thing to do, and I think that’s awesome,” he
Charles Woodson
says.Woodson retired from the NFL in 2015, and in 2019, he

launched Intercept, a collection of Paso Robles and Monterey wines
WS: What would you say you need to understand to succeed in both
comprising Cabernet, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and a red blend, in
football and wine?
partnership with O’Neill Vintners, sold at a more tailgate-friendly
CW: There are similarities as far as the product that you get. When you
price of $20 per bottle. watch the game on Sundays, you see the end product of the time that I

put in the week before, maybe the summer before. There’s a lot that goes
Wine Spectator: What were some of your early wine experiences with
into that actual Sunday. You talk about wine, you go into the store, you
the Raiders? buy a bottle of wine, you go home, you open it, you drink it, and you’re
Charles Woodson: Early on, it was Robert Mondavi. That’s the first one satisfied with what you’re getting. You just see the end product, but you
that I can really remember going to, touring a little bit, seeing the barrel don’t necessarily know what had to go into it to be that way. The weather

storage rooms, walking around the vineyards. I think as my career kind had to be ideal, can’t have any problems with fog or insects. So there are
of went along, more and more players that I knew started to get into wine. a lot of different pitfalls that can get in your way. Just like athletics: You
Rick Mirer was really into wine, so I remember times when we would be could bruise your hip, there’s a lot of things that can happen, but you’ve
traveling back and forth to games—this was before they had all the bans still got to pull through on Sundays. —B.O.
on having alcohol on the team planes—we would bring bottles of wine

and we would all break bread together.
DREW BLEDSOE

WS: What have you learned since you started making your own wines?
CW: From a business standpoint, a lot of people don’t go into it with their

eyes wide open, everything that goes into having your own label. As a The QB marshals Washington and Oregon with
young guy getting into that business, you kind of got to learn things the Doubleback, Bledsoe Family and Bledsoe-McDaniels
hard way. All the little details about the storage and the barrels, all of the
little intricate details that go into it—it can be overwhelming. My initial la- hile Drew Bledsoe has been making winning wines for
bel was a high-end wine. I could only cater to a certain person for the most over a decade, his past few seasons have been champi-

part. With O’Neill, we can offer more varieties that are affordable to my onship-level by any standard. After the four-time Pro
fans and to people who love wine. ... W Bowl New England Patriots quarterback retired in 2007,
[The NFL had] a rule where you couldn’t promote an alcoholic prod- he founded Doubleback in Walla Walla, Wash., near where he grew
uct. My pushback was that I wasn’t promoting someone’s brand out up. What began as a single Cabernet purchased from sourced fruit ROB LEITER/GETTY IMAGES

there. This is actually my business. How do you stop me from entering has grown into a company with four estate vineyards planted to nearly
into a business? 60 acres, a svelte 14,000-square-foot gravity-flow winery completed

78 JAN. 31 - FEB. 29, 2020 • WINE SPECTATOR