Game, Set & Match: Wine and Tennis, a winning combination

 

Tennis is a truly wonderful sport, often unpredictable and above all never monotonous, a discipline in which the perfect combination of technical, athletic and mental aspects is an essential condition for result achievement and consolidation.

Also, Italian movement (at the male level) is experiencing a real golden moment in recent times, with numerous excellent players and some young prospects who have now become a reality that - in the coming years - could push themselves towards heights ever reaches from our country in this discipline.

For this reason, as a great tennis lover, I enjoyed (as indeed I have done in the past for other sports) to approach great champions - from the past and the present - to wines that remind them of their characteristics.

Of course, I recognize that these are subjective and personal combinations, mostly the result of pindaric flights, but every now and then, getting out of objectivity, wandering with the mind towards apparently senseless spaces and topics, can prove to be a great help for our spirit, which helps us to face and live better everyday reality.

So, are you ready for my pairings? 

Roger Federer / Romanée Conti Grand Cru

The great beauty. Triumph and ecstasy, poetry and sentiment. All in one thing, infinite space within a single entity. Unreachable and unapproachable beyond any ranking and beyond any judgment, a timeless and boundless champion. Adored and idolized perhaps even beyond its grand value, but capable like no other of moving the conversation towards a different playing field, the one that transcends from reality into myth, one in which matter becomes spirit.

 

Rafael Nadal / Chateau Mouton-Rotschild Pauillac Premier Cru Classè

The Cannibal. A war machine, a tank able to pass above everything and everyone, showing year after year, occasion after occasion, with a determination and a stubbornness bordering on the superhuman. Perhaps it doesn’t reach the poetic heights of other performers, but thanks to study, dedication and work it has shown that it can sit at the table of the greatest, if not even get to be the best. "First maybe I can't be, second I don't want to be, I'm Rafael/Mouton"

 

Novak Djokovic / Brunello di Montalcino Madonna delle Grazie il Marroneto

The perfect gear. Champion of crystalline talent from its youth and without any apparent defect, even if - at least at the beginning - not considered as an absolute number one. But time is a gentleman, and the extraordinary continuity of results and awards obtained year after year are increasingly bringing him up, ever closer to that peak reached only by the greatest of his field, to the performers destined to enter inside the Olympus of the gods.

 

Gustavo Kuerten / Amarone delle Valpolicella Riserva La Mattonara Zymè

The first love is never forgotten. Powerful without being muscular or having to flex your muscles. A slender and elegant dancer, a great interpreter who, while always entering and moving on tiptoe, at the right moment knows how to deliver the decisive blow, the one that warms your heart, the one that makes you enter your heart and makes you remember it for always.

 

Jannik Sinner / Barolo Cannubi Serio & Battista Borgogno

The rampant youth. A newcomer to the court of the greats. Long-limbed and vertical but at the same time powerful, elegant but with muscles and character in the right place. The entrance was hidden, almost if it did not want to disturb, but with the passage of time it is climbing, and also rather quickly, the pre-established hierarchies. There is still work to be done to smooth out some features, but the heart, the head and above all the potential - partly unexpressed - really seems to be there.

 

John McEnroe / Cos d’Estournel Saint-Estephe Deuxieme Cru Classè

Genius and recklessness. Character and personality to sell, sometimes even a little over the top and with a strong predisposition to go against the pre-established order and the politically correct. But quality, charisma and charm from the top of the class, from the champion who, even if slightly inferior in hierarchy and rank, has managed over time to be remembered and imitated as - if not even more - those (actually very few) who have succeeded in the enterprise to defeat him.

 

 

Bjorn Borg / Tignanello Toscana Rosso Antinori

The visionary. He broke the mold, rebelling against a context that seemed to have made unchangeable, contributing to accompanying his belonging discipline towards a new dimension, from which there has been no turning back. Sometimes a bit mechanical, almost repetitive and in some ways unpleasant in its precision bordering on manic, but unquestionably a turning point and link between old and new, between ancient and modern.

 

Patrick Rafter / Barbacarlo Provincia di Pavia Lino Maga

Brave Heart. Bulwark of a world on the verge of extinction, a defender of an ancient tradition that the passage of time and methods seemed to want to cancel at the expense of a standardization based entirely on muscles, predictability and power. Standard bearer of an obsolete world but at the time proud of its origins, never banal even in error, which could not stop the change but chose never to come to terms with it.