ONE of my favourite days of the year is Super Bowl Sunday, even though my beloved Chicago Bears haven’t been in the final for a year or two. Despite that, I’ll still enjoy the match into the wee small hours with a glass or two of something nice.
So today, we have to go all-American and there’s no better way to kick off the celebrations than by grabbing a bottle of Roederer Quartet Brut NV (Inverarity One to One, £18.49) from the fridge. And when I say the fridge, I’m not referring to the Chicago Bears’ defensive line man, William Perry (known as the Fridge to his friends), who helped to win the Super Bowl in 1985. To be honest, if he’s holding the Quartet, you should let him keep it. The Quartet is particularly good as it’s made by Roederer, one of the best champagne houses, and it’s aged on the lees for two years making a genuine and very tasty champagne style from the new world.
With Geoff’s rack of lamb, try a bottle of Cline Ancient Vines Zinfandel 2013 (Majestic, £15.99). Zinfandel is a tricky grape for winemakers as the individual fruits within bunches can ripen at different rates. This means that unless you harvest very carefully, you’ll end up with unripe, ripe and overripe grapes together in the press. Harvesting carefully involves selecting only the ripe grapes at the right time, which can mean making three or four trips to the same vine – and that's very labour-intensive. This is why you have to choose your Zinfandel producer carefully, and stick to names like Cline, Rodney Strong and Ridge.
After dinner, you’ll have some time before the match starts, so put some beers on ice. To celebrate the magnificent 1985 Bears, why not grab a few bottles of Goose Island Honkers Ale (Hippo Beers, £2.20), which hails from Illinois, and works for Broncos and Panthers fans alike.
Pete Stewart is Glasgow director of Inverarity 121, 185a Bath Street, Glasgow www.inverarity121.com
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here