Vinity Fair

There Are Some Very Fine Tour-player Wine Labels, But Oenophiles Don’t Buy The Connection Between Grape And Game

BACK IN THE TIME OF KING ARTHUR and the first season of Game of Thrones, everyone walked around all day with nothing to do except drink wine from silver cups. Maybe they were chalices, but either way they drank a lot of wine, and you would too if you lived in a world without plumbing. Right around then, give or take a few centuries and dragons, the Open Championship was first played in Scotland, and the champion golfer of the year took home a red leather belt, like he’d just won the WWF title. Since some of those guys held their britches up with a piece of rope tied around the waist, a regular belt would have been a nice get, but the fancy one was useless and was eventually retired after Young Tom Morris won it three years running (330–328 BC). And a good thing, too, because it was replaced by a claret jug, which is now the game’s most recognized trophy, and moreover brings us to the point that golf champions and wine have some history together.

The Claret Jug doesn’t look like Tyrion Lannister’s personal wine decanter by accident. The taste that Brits have for claret— basically any red wine from Bordeaux—evolved during the Middle Ages, when the Normans ruled Bordeaux, among other places, and King John granted the region tax exemptions to make some easy friends. That’s when Bordeaux’s standardissue clairet became a thing for the English, and why we have a Claret Jug instead of a chardonnay jug.