The Wall Street Journal-20080216-WEEKEND JOURNAL- Food - Drink -- Wine Notes- A Super Controversy- Is a Glass of Wine Offside at Football-s Biggest Game- The Blogs and Ms- Bundchen Disagree

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WEEKEND JOURNAL; Food & Drink -- Wine Notes: A Super Controversy; Is a Glass of Wine Offside at Football's Biggest Game? The Blogs and Ms. Bundchen Disagree

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It was one of the most controversial moments of the Super Bowl, but you might have missed it amid all that talk about who actually won.

During the game, cameras focused on Tom Brady's girlfriend, supermodel Gisele Bundchen, sitting in a sky box. In her hand was a glass of red wine, and in a lovely, large glass to boot.

This was the moment when we first got up to cheer. It was a pleasure to see someone savoring the Super Bowl with a glass of wine. It was also a pleasure to see someone else who believes that wine should be enjoyed in big, generous glasses, even at a sports stadium.

It turned out, however, that we were not the only ones who noticed -- and some of them were not happy about it. There seemed to be some sense that drinking wine indicated a certain insouciance on the part of Ms. Bundchen, as though she would have appeared more concerned about the outcome of the game had she been drinking beer from a plastic cup. The comments were harsh:

Bob Cook, on MSNBC.com: "As if Coach Bill Belichick's guarded, humorless demeanor or quarterback Tom Brady's tabloid-level celebrity wasn't enough to portray the Patriots as better than you, there was the televised image of supermodel/Brady girlfriend Gisele Bundchen in a luxury box, seriously sipping a glass of wine like she was sitting in an upscale bistro."

The blog for 102.1 The Edge, a radio station in Toronto: "Gisele Bundchen, watching her man Tom Brady at the Super Bowl, drinking red wine? Sweetheart, it's a football game -- you drink beer. If I go to the opera I'm classy enough not to drink beer from the bottle."

Alison Stewart, co-host of NPR's "The Bryant Park Project": "Things were not quite so bright for Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Well, at least he had Gisele's shoulder to cry on. She was up in one of the press booths drinking wine through the whole game."

That's just a small sampling. Some were so angry about the wine we can't quote them here. Even one of the doormen in our building thought that Mr. Brady kept looking up at Ms. Bundchen and wondered if the sight of her had proved distracting. Jeff Boswell, who has a blog on fannation.com, had the same thought, though he added: "Personally, I can think of no better distraction as a quarterback than gazing up into a luxury suite and seeing my supermodel girlfriend knocking back a glass of wine like it was Kool-Aid." Could the quarterback have been thinking: Hey, what's she drinking? And, if so, could that have been the wine that destroyed history for the Patriots? Heavens, this is a virtual Winegate. So, of course, the big question is: What was in the glass? And what was that pretty stemware?

After a week of investigative digging, we can report that the wine that changed Super Bowl history was most likely Gallo.

We cannot be absolutely certain of this. When we called Ms. Bundchen's agent at IMG Models in New York to ask what the wine was, her office replied: "We don't usually comment on our clients' personal lives." So there. Then we called the University of Phoenix Stadium and a good local wine store, Sportsman's Fine Wines & Spirits, which is in touch with local wine gossip, and they helped us narrow the possibilities.

Even the swells can't bring their own wine into the stadium. So when people arrived at the skyboxes -- or lofts, as they're called there -- they were greeted with Gallo Family Vineyards Sonoma Reserve Chardonnay (2006) and Cabernet Sauvignon (2005). They also received what the stadium's caterer, Centerplate Inc., calls a "very limited edition 'Gold Etched' bottle featuring the logo from SBXLII on a McWilliams 2005 Shiraz from Hanwood Estate in South Eastern Australia." In addition, Centerplate says the high-rollers in the lofts could also make a special order among these red wines: Sterling Merlot from California ($46.04 a bottle), Marques de Riscal Rioja from Spain and Santa Rita "120 Series" Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile ($34.53 each). Finally, each loft received, as a gift, one bottle each of these four lovely reds: Gary Farrell Pinot Noir, Shafer Vineyards Merlot and Rubicon from California and Scala Dei Priorat from Spain (which was our favorite in a Priorat tasting in 2005, by the way).

We can't imagine it would be worth anyone's time and money to order and pay for the special-order wines and there was just one bottle of the others, which we would guess folks probably took home with them. When we called Gallo, a spokesman told us the commemorative bottle of McWilliams, which is a Gallo brand, is meant as a souvenir, so the servers don't usually pour it. Therefore, the wine that was really flowing in the lofts, and the most likely wine at the supermodel's lips, was Gallo Cabernet (75,000 cases produced; suggested retail price $15). And the stemware? Centerplate says it uses Nadine by Oneida. By the way, Centerplate, which is a national company, says more and more wine is being served at stadiums across the country. So get used to it.

Meantime, we also asked Chris Hinton, a seven-time All-Pro offensive lineman who retired from the NFL after 13 years, about all this. Mr. Hinton now runs Hinton's Wine Store in Alpharetta, Ga. We wondered if he thought that drinking wine at a Super Bowl was acceptable, what he drank himself during the game this year and what he believed Ms. Bundchen should have had in her glass. "I think drinking wine at any football game is acceptable only if the wine is good, you have proper stemware (no Dixie cups), you're sitting in a luxury suite and it's Super Bowl," Mr. Hinton responded. "I have to admit I didn't drink wine for the Super Bowl. We broke in my Christmas gift to Mya, my wife: a new margarita maker. If I could have suggested a wine for Gisele, I would have poured her an Oregon Pinot Noir, in particular Cristom Eileen '05."

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Melanie Grayce West contributed to this column. Our email address is [email protected].