Vermeil doing just vine nowadays

Former NFL coach Dick Vermeil's wine was a hit at a meeting of the NY Wine Media Guild. Courtesy of Linda Zimmerman Dr. Z's Mailbag Dr. Z will answer select user questions each week in his NFL mailbag. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

Dick Vermeil was concerned. He had gotten off to a good start with his 2003 vintage Charbono, a dark, stylish wine that is made only in California. It was a correct wine, mixing the dark brooding touches of this exotic grape with a clean taste of berryish fruit, but then the next vintage, the 2004, had shown an overripe, spirity quality that puzzled a few of the tasters in the room.

And the Charbono entries from 13 other wineries were closing fast, six vintages of Sally Ottoson's Pacific Star Winery north of Fort Bragg, America's westernmost wine outpost, overlooking the crashing waves of the Pacific, the rare and wildly expensive Turley Charbonos, with entries going back 16 years, almost the compete roster of prestige names dedicated to this little known but dearly loved grape.

They were gathered at Felidia's Restaurant in New York for the monthly luncheon and tasting of the NY Wine Media Guild on Wednesday. Never had so many of the mysterious and little understood Charbonos been collected under a single roof. And now Vermeil, who had taken the Rams and Eagles to the Super Bowl, was down to his last shot, the 2005 vintage, Frediani Vineyard, from his Calistoga winery, On the Edge, and some of his old fans in the room wished him luck.

The wine didn't need it. Charbonos can run the gamut from stylishness to the brutal wallops of alcohol and tannin, which made the old Inglenooks of 50 years ago so famous. But Vermeil's On the Edge, Frediani, was a mirror of the way he coached in the NFL for 16 years. A great sense of class and style and elegance, but with surprising effectiveness as well. Just think back to his 1999 Super Bowl champion Rams, the Greatest Show on Turf, and the way they moved down the field with Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk and Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce putting on that masterful display of offensive artistry. Put that stylishness in a bottle and you've got On the Edge.

People congratulated Vermeil afterward, myself included. No scores were kept ... this wasn't a judging, after all, but everyone had his or her favorite, and Vermeil's 2005 was mine.

"It really was good, wasn't it?" he said in that almost boyish way that he used to describe a particularly memorable play on the field.

At 71, Vermeil has made his peace with the world, and that world is the haut monde of elegant wines. The unbearable pressure of the NFL, which once threatened to tear him apart, has been replaced by a life in which competitors root for each other and actually compliment their fellow winemakers on notable efforts. He has hooked up with an old Calistogsa buddy, Paul Smith, the majority owner of On the Edge and a winemaker whose credentials include a major role in the famous Mondavi-Mouton Rothschild creation, Opus One.

Is Vermeil happy to be looking at the NFL through rose-colored glasses? You bet.

"What did you think of the draft?" I asked him, just to let him know that I hadn't entirely abandoned the NFL.

"You know something? I was fishing that day," he said. "And that's the truth."

Vermeil grew up in Calistoga, the northernmost outpost of the Napa Valley. He worked in his father's auto repair shop. Best of all, he was a cellar rat who knew how to work a harvest.

"I helped my grandfather on the French side of the family make the wine," Vermeil said. "Gene Frediani, who owned the vineyard, and I would truck the grapes to my grandfather, and he'd leave my younger brother and me to make the wine.

"I had wine with dinner as far back as a 10-year old. My dad, who was French-Italian, was sent home from elementary school one day because he had wine in his thermos bottle."

On the Edge produces the usual run of Napa Valley varieties: Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah. The grace notes are the Charbono and a special estate Cabernet called Jean Louis Vermeil, with a picture of his great grandfather's town in France on the label. It is a silky, elegant wine, a beauty, as is the Charbono. Vermeil has worked the grapes from Gene Frediani's vineyard all his life. Frediani's widow, Jeanne, still owns it.