TVF's World Cup of Wine 2010

My life gets really busy between now and the end of the Wine Blogger's Conference at the end of this month in Walla Walla, WA. So it is decidedly convenient that the FIFA World Cup is kicking off this week in South Africa, and so many great wine producing countries are going to be represented in games over the coming weeks. Here on the blog I have selected a match from each Group in which I will taste a wine from the participating countries head-to-head. I will then keep track of the wine matchup's ability to predict the soccer game's winner. The selected matches are:

June 13 - Australia v. Germany

June 15 - Portugal gets an automatic win as Brazil, Korea, and Ivory Coast give me problems in procuring a suitable competitor

June 18 - US v. Slovenia

June 20 - Italy v. New Zealand

June 22 - Argentina v. Greece

June 22 - South Africa v. France

June 25 - Chile v. Spain

A couple of ground rules that are likely to be broken as I see fit:

- all wines will retail for under $20 (Slovenia might give me a problem but I'm researching)

- no complaining about which wine is selected to represent a country, this is just for fun

- this is not going to be done blind

- I don't care if you don't think it is fair to judge a riesling against a pinotage

- I will recruit guest judges based solely on who is at my house when I open the bottles, and I will not disclose this

- all wines will receive a score from me alone, based on my existing rating scale, and this score will be used to determine the winner

- in the case of a tie, the tie stands

Any suggestions on what wines should compete should come soon. I'm headed around town this weekend to get the competitors (I have to write these early and schedule them to post while I'm traveling through WA).

Don't like soccer? Think this is a cheap and easy excuse to avoid coming up with creative content? I promise if you play along, or do something similar you will find it fun and maybe even get caught up in the worldwide excitement that surrounds the event (the World Cup, not the Vino File Wine Cup). As I always say, 'may the country with the best value wine that happens to end up in my cart and show well against another random wine' win.