Arnold Palmer, Wine Lover

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Oct 5th 2004 at 11:38AM

The beverage you most associate with Arnold Palmer is probably the "Arnold Palmer" a mixture of iced tea and lemonade, but the golf master is also a wine lover. Wine Spectator visits with the golf legend in his Latrobe, Pennsylvania home. To celebrate Palmer's 50th and final Masters golf tournament, two of Palmer's friends, Howdy Giles and Rob Gillette, presented him with a triple imperial (that's 10 liters!) of a 2001 Blackstone Winery Merlot. The bottle was etched with the words "Golf's King and The Fans' Champion." The bottle remains unopened in front of Palmer's desk in Latrobe.

The wine cellar of Palmer's hometown residence is full of treasures, including bottlings that were gifts to celebrate golfing victories. Palmer's cellar holds 1,000 bottles including the Bordeaux third-growth Chateau Palmer, gifts from the late Mark McCormack. The vintages include a 1947, '58, '60 and '62 honoring various milestones in his life. There are bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild, Chateau Margaux and the requisite stack of boxes of Dom Perignon. Amazingly, Palmer says he still has more putters than bottles of wine.

Filed under: Wine