Good Morning!

I am not sure I have ever discussed how much I LOVE Basketball. I love college basketball and the month of March is one of the most fun times of the year for me. I LOVE both Men’s and Women’s basketball. I think I love Basketball for two reasons, I was born and raised in Indiana and it is kinda like a religion in the Hoosier state and second, my uncle played pro basketball, so I remember going to watch him and that was fun.

The men’s NCAA selection committee made there selections and choose the top 64 teams that will be in the famous “Dance”. Today the women’s committee will do the same. I fill out my brackets and and jump in all the office pools and I will be glued to the tv during game time to see if I have picked the upsets or stayed true to my favorite teams.

My all time favorite teams are the Men’s Purdue Boilermakers (This is one of the college’s I studied engineering) and in the women’s basketball world I LOVE the Tennessee Lady Vols. I have been a fan since I played ball of coach Pat Summit.

There are rivalries in all sports and sometimes it seems like by the end of the season we always end up watching many of the same teams because they constantly have great winning programs. In the Men’s world, Kansas, Ohio State, Michigan State, UCLA, Arizona, Texas just to name a some of the teams you will see in the Sweet 16.

In the Women’s world we will see Tennessee, UCONN, Rutgers, Stanford, Baylor, Duke, Notre Dame, etc. So I started to think about 2 things, which wines will I be enjoying during the games and if I were the selection committee and I had to pick 64 wines to go head to head which ones would I choose?

Before I could even start to make selections I would have too decide would I set up my competition by the grape (Merlot, Cabernet, Shiraz etc..) or would I go by producers (Beringer, Mondavi, Concha ya Toro). There are always big contenders that are up against each other.

I decided that I would set up the 64 wines by breaking them down by grapes first and then pick the most awesome producers to represent their wines.

Then I would also consider who was the “coach” or in my world the Winemakers. You have winemakers who can take good grapes and make insanely great wine, let’s name a few like Heidi Barrett, Merry Edwards, Randall Graham, Manfred Krankl, Justin Smith, Jason Moore, Helen Turley and Dirk Hampson. Just like the great coaches in the NCAA like Geno Auriemo, Tom Izzo, and the rest of the great coaches, they build a team, choose the players, practiced them daily and they know their strengths and weaknesses, they know the equipment, they know all the rules and they know how to motivate and how to inspire the players to greatness.

So as I am counting down the minutes until tip off on Thursday, I will put together my top 64 wines and share with you!

Have a great Monday, follow this week and I will put together my wine brackets throughout the week!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi