When the Ryder Cup is over, one of the teams surely will drink from it. If you are unable to join them, here’s an alternative: Drink the official Ryder Cup wine.
One of the world’s great winemakers, Baron Philippe de Rothschild, partnered with golf-course architect Robert Trent Jones Jr.—whose father designed this year’s Cup venue, Hazeltine National Golf Club in Minnesota—to create the special Mouton Cadet Ryder Cup Cuvée that is available at the course as well as in select U.S. markets.
The winemakers created the cuvée, a Bordeaux that sells for $14, while Jones designed the bottle, drawing a caddie as a tribute to his father: Young Jones started as a caddie, or “cadet,” to Jones Sr., just as the Baron Rothschild is the “cadet” of his family. (In the photo, above, that’s Jones, left, with Rothschild’s Managing Director, Hugues Lechanoine.)
As Jones Jr. put it: “Wine, like golf, is about passion, respect for nature, etiquette, and sharing moments in life. A golf course architect and a winemaker share a similar approach to their work: cultivating the land they are given, being true to the environment, enhancing the most pleasing elements of a landscape or a wine, providing either course challenges or tasting pleasures. The Ryder Cup brings together great golfers for a competition where team spirit means more than individual performance, exactly as blending wine brings more than one single varietal to create a special cuvée.” We’ll drink to that.