How Wine and Soccer are Exactly the Same

If you get into the wine business, you are in for the long haul. There aren't any shortcuts to planting your vineyard, farming it for three years before you get a usable crop, making your wine and putting it in barrel for two years; then putting it in bottle for a year before finally selling it.

This same long build applies to soccer too. Unlike most American sports that put a premium on scoring, a successful game of soccer is a succession of feints and flurries, an accumulation of foreign territory until finally (if it comes at all), the ball finds the back of the net.

Anticipation is huge when it comes to wine...you've been storing this special bottle for years for just the right occasion; you take out your finest glassware, cook that perfect meal, pop the cork, pour, and then you're overwhelmed by vinous goodness. This exact same quality is what makes soccer the great sport it is. The paucity of scoring is what adds such value to the goal when it finally comes...90-minutes of flat-out running, headers, slide tackles, the beautiful synchronicity of the wall pass and give-and-go, all in service to that one moment of fulfillment.

I could also mention the historic, relative lack of enthusiasm (until recently) for wine and soccer in America and the perceived dominance of Europe vs. America in wine and soccer (again, until recently), but the point is made.

Now either I'm right about this or I've been watching too many of my daughters' soccer games. I guess the real point is that, at least with wine and soccer, often much time must pass before the real special richness of each is obvious.