With this year’s Olympics being held in Paris, France, one cannot help but think of wine and the potential to pair the games with wines while watching! The torch relay took route through one of the most iconic wine regions in the world. It makes sense that Tony Parker, the French NBA Hall of Famer, should join the Olympic torchbearers. He became a vintner himself, joining entrepreneur Michael Reybier as a partner of Château La Mascaronne. The torch relay commenced in Marseille, which is close to Provence, Bandol, and Aix-en- Provence, home to some of the best Rosés and then intertwined through wine regions, such as Languedoc-Roussillon, Loire, Bordeaux, Reims, and ending in Paris.

It is pretty typical to say that what grows together tends to be together. The phrase seems not to be confined to just food, but it also seems to extend to food-and-wine pairings. One step further, in the world of making wine, what grows together tends to get blended together. Old World traditions have been formulated to produce the same style of wine with very little interpretation year-to-year, other than how the microclimate had differed.

This weekend we celebrate and drink a toast to the important men in our lives, whether you are a father, are a partner to a father or have a father to honor. To cheer on those wonderful men, here are some wines to consider sharing.

There are grapes in the world that are planted in a wide range of environments. This is an absolute understatement. Of this vastness is a small number of varieties that have easily traveled from their homelands and have been planted around the world. Why? Because they are proven grapes that can produce high-quality wines and are not too fussy about where they are planted.