What to drink while you are watching the Olympics

Some weeks ago we blogged about what wines were best to accompany different types of music. Today I’ve been having a look to see if anyone had investigated the best wines to accompany the Olympics and sure enough, Fiona Beckett has provided just such an article in the Guardian, which you can read here. Now while Fiona has recommended some cracking wines and made a nice gesture towards how Brits love to ‘support the underdog’ by providing choices from Chile and Israel as well as some of the more prolific medal-winning nations, as you know, we do things somewhat differently here at 12×75.com. So here’s our selection of wines to accompany every imaginable Olympic eventuality – we hope that these will help to enhance your viewing/drinking experience and help you to really feel like part of the action….

To accompany the equestrian events: Have a nice red burgundy, something with a few years’ age on it so it has that lovely horsey farmyard stink, it will make you feel like you are right there in the arena.

To accompany the Men’s 100 metres final: A fine Jamaican rum will probably be appropriate, and bearing in mind it lasts around 9 seconds, you won’t have much time to pull the cork on anything else.

To accompany the final of the beach volleyball: I suggest breaking out the Asti Spumante – it is sweet, gently bubbly and light-hearted and leaves you with a slight sense of guilt that you probably ought not to be enjoying it so much.

To accompany the weightlifting: A robust claret in magnum. Drink two.

To accompany the heptathlon/decathlon/Modern Pentathlon: For these intense events, you should challenge yourself to get into the athlete’s mentality and spur them along by displaying the same degree of dedication to your wine consumption that they are applying to their sport. Therefore I would recommend having some sort of sofa-based tasting event involving seven or ten wines, depending which event you are watching, or for the modern pentathlon, five different fortified wines such as Port, Sherry, Madeira, etc, to reflect the contrast between the five different disciplines.

To accompany the nagging concern that China is buying the world’s supply of Bordeaux and drinking it while in its infancy because they know something we don’t, namely that it contains some sort of elixir that they can use to create a nation of unbeatable and indestructible Olympic athletes – your best Bordeaux. But drink a lot of it, and then hide the rest.

To accompany a British gold medal: In the event of a British gold medal, you should have at the ready a wine which has won a prolific gold medal at the International Wine Challenge. Its sheer splendour will help you to empathise with the athlete during their moment of glory.

To accompany the crushing and devastating defeat of one of the British medal hopefuls: Again I suggest reaching for a medal-winning wine, but rather than gold, look for something in the supermarket that has won a slightly rubbish award like a bronze medal in the ‘best Pinot Meunier from Argentina’ category. It will help you to appreciate that not everyone who wins a medal necessarily deserves one.

To accompany the closing ceremony: If it is anywhere near as surreal as the opening ceremony, you will want something that both reassures and confuses you when the giant billowing Voldemort appears. I suggest an Italian wine made from the relatively obscure Marzemino grape. I really like it, but I’ve never entirely understood why.

So there you have it. Feel free to provide a #7WordWineReview on any of your Olympic wine choices, and remember that it is not the winning but the taking part that counts….