Aurilia's searching for clutch hits and chardonnays

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - According to the stereotype, a baseball player is a crude crotch-scratching, tobacco-chewing biped. And there is some truth to the stereotype -- more in the past than now. But the Giants' Rich Aurilia explodes the stereotype, renders it silly.

In addition to being a serious baseball player, Aurilia is a serious wine guy, not that he always was. He grew up in South Brooklyn, Avenue V and East 9th Street, a middle-class neighborhood, mostly Italian. And although his parents didn't make their own wine, lots of neighbors did and kept it in casks and broke it out before meals. He remembers wine at dinner, red stuff, but he never knew the varietal. When his great grandmother and his grandmother passed away, they stopped drinking wine in his house. An end of an era. An end of a custom.

And that's how things stood until Aurilia joined the Giants. He would go to restaurants in San Francisco, good restaurants, and he began to appreciate seafood as he never had before, and around 2000, maybe sooner, maybe later, he started to notice the wine lists and there were so many wines, and most he didn't know. He's an athlete. He's competitive. He took the wine as a challenge.

He bought books. He read. He learned words like "tannic" and "malolactic." He asked himself, "What is my palate like?" He decided to start with white wines, chardonnays mostly. But something was wrong with the chards -- too oaky, too buttery. Where was the fruit taste? He never has loved chardonnays and when he drinks white, he'll go for sauvignon blanc because it's crisp and fruity.

You may be wondering what this has to do with baseball. Absolutely nothing. But it has everything to do with baseball culture, which is growing increasingly sophisticated. I'll get to some of Aurilia's teammates in a moment, but FYI Giants manager Bruce Bochy is a wine drinker, big cabs, to be precise. The days of a six-pack of postgame suds are gradually fading.

Anyway, Aurilia quickly moved from whites to reds, and he started with merlot. (Remember that classic line about merlots from the movie "Sideways?") "Merlot seemed the most basic," he said, sitting in the dugout before Friday's game with the Diamondbacks. "It's the way I thought red would taste."

After that he moved onto pinot noir (he's partial to Russian River maker Rochioli) and then to cabernet sauvignon and syrahs. He loved the reds, big and oaky. And then he made converts -- Giants outfielders Dave Roberts and Randy Winn. They're a three-man wine club now.

On cross-country flights one will be assigned to bring a bottle on the plane and they'll sit there and sip and discuss their tasting notes. Can you imagine Babe Ruth comparing his tasting notes on a cabernet with Ty Cobb? The Georgia Peach would have punched the Sultan of Swat in the snoot.

"Dave and I probably talk more about wine than baseball," Aurilia said.

After one night game last season, Aurilia and Roberts rented a limo and, along with their wives, drove to the Kenwood Inn and went wine tasting the next day -- an off day for the Giants. Aurilia remembers tasting at Colin Lee and Chateau St. Jean and Audelssa -- the owner is a friend of Roberts. Aurilia is a particular fan of Mi Sueno (My Dream), a small winery in an industrial park south of downtown Napa.

He regularly participates in blind tastings. Roberts had a syrah tasting at his home in San Diego. Aurilia has participated in Italian tastings at restaurants -- "mostly Barolos and Barbarescos." And last summer he invited the folks from Mi Sueno to give a tasting at his house.

"I'm fortunate to live in one of the greatest cities for wine in the world," he said. In case you're wondering, he was talking about San Francisco. "With my job I can afford to have this as a hobby. I want to share what I have with people. Wine is meant to be shared. When Dave comes to my house, I say, 'Pick anything you want.' "

Roberts picks from Aurilia's recently-installed temperature-controlled wine cellar in Aurilia's Phoenix home. A wine cellar in the desert, is this guy serious or what? It's not technically a cellar because Arizona houses usually don't have cellars. Aurilia ripped out a closet and installed stand-up racks that roll out.

The "cellar" holds 600 bottles and, when possible, Aurilia gets the winemaker to sign the bottle. The signed bottles he displays in a special part of the cellar. He made the room look like a wine cave. It is all brick, even the ceiling, which is curved to replicate a wine barrel. A chandelier hangs from the ceiling. On one wall, he's hung a large painting of a wine bottle. "I don't know what kind of wine it is," he said.

Aurilia is down to earth, a Brooklyn guy at heart. "When I was a kid," he said, "I used to collect baseball cards. Now I collect wine."

You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at 521-5486 or lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.