Golfing greats top wine list at the 19th hole

THESE men all drink and drive, and now the Turnberry golf resort on the Ayrshire coast is to offer an exclusive wine list from vineyards owned by some of the game's leading stars.

A whiff of the fairways will come from two Americans - major winners Arnold Palmer and John Daly - as well as South Africans David Frost and Retief Goosen, and Irishman Christy 0'Connor.

The legendary Palmer's Cabernet Sauvignon is said to possess the same balance and strength as the man who won 94 professional tournaments.

However, those who prefer a wine with a bigger character may reach for the Lion's Chardonnay produced by the big-hitting Daly, who won the Open Championship at St Andrews.

Top of the range, however, is Goosen's Expression Cabernet Shiraz 2007 at 125 a bottle, while the tipples of Daly - better known as a beer drinker - are on sale for a relatively bargain-basement 36.

The new wine list was the idea of Ralph Porciani, the director of operations at Turnberry, which was the world's first golf resort when it opened in 1906, and hosted the Open Championship on its Ailsa course in 2009.

Porciani said: "We are trying to give the guests who come here to play golf little 'wow' experiences and I think that is what the golfers' wines do.

"If you are a fan of Arnold Palmer, it would be great to sit in the restaurant looking down on to the 18th green of the Ailsa and open a bottle of his Cabernet Sauvignon. That is the kind of thing that golfers' dreams are made of. You play 18 holes, come up for dinner, and drink a bottle of wine by your favourite golfer."

Most golfers discover the rarefied world of top wines while touring, during which they stay in the finest resorts in the world.

However, David Frost's family has been in the business for more than 60 years. "Winemaking is in my blood," he explained. "It was the money I earned from harvesting grapes that allowed me to purchase my first set of golf clubs."

His Signature Chenin Blanc 2009 is on the menu priced at 31, while his Par Excellence 2002 is 74.

Goosen, who has twice won the US Open, has gone into partnership with the owner of a vineyard in the Garden Route region of his native country.

According to Porciani, each golfer's character can be detected in the finished product. Of the Chenin Blanc produced by Frost, who won 20 professional tournaments, he said: "It is a little bit fruity, spicy and tropical all at the same time. David himself was like that. The wine was like his character - it's one of my favourites."

Wayne Scott, owner of CelebrityWines.ie, a specialist wine website, said that golfers move into wine as a means of expanding their brand."It fits the profile of their image nicely to have a nice wine that can be sold as gifts for golfers and at golf functions," he said. "In this very competitive wine market, any label that will stop a buyer for a second and catches his attention, like an Arnold Palmer, has a good chance and, providing they like the wines, they will come back for more."

He said that the golf wine market is growing, with Annika Sorenstam, the greatest female player in the history of the game, among those to add a vineyard to the list of their accomplishments.

Over the past 20 years the vogue for celebrity wines has grown, as has the number of public figures willing to invest in vineyards or have their name and likeness slapped on a bottle's label.

Among the earliest celebrities to embark on a new career was Olivia Newton-John, the singer and actress whose label Koala Blue Wines was launched in 1983.

The most successful is Francis Ford Coppola, the director of The Godfather trilogy, who declared that his vineyards in the Napa Valley have replenished the fortune he lost making films.

Savanna Samson, an American porn star, released Sogno Uno, the 'Dream One', whose label has an image of her in a see-through dress, but which received excellent reviews from the established wine critics. The star of The Devil In Miss Jones said: "The wine really represents who I am."

Adam Lechmere, news editor of wine magazine Decanter.com, explained why people would choose to uncork a golfer's wine. He said: "It is simply curiosity. It's exactly the same as a perfume that is endorsed by Claudia Schiffer or a Tiger Woods Rolex. There is no reason to think a celebrity has any more idea about what they produce than anyone else.

"But the wine has to be good. No sommelier would list a wine unless they considered it good enough to list."