Sonoma County named official wine of 2016 Super Bowl (w/video)

While not as prominent as a bath of Gatorade or a champagne spray, Sonoma County wines will be featured at next year’s Super Bowl to be held at Levi’s Stadium.

Sonoma County will be the official wine supplier at the 50th anniversary of the Super Bowl, announced Keith Bruce, chief executive for the San Francisco Bay Area Super Bowl Host Committee. The county also will be an official destination partner.

“The eyes of the world will be on the Bay Area,” Bruce said Friday. “We want nothing more than people to come to the Super Bowl; spend a night, three or four nights in the city of San Francisco or wherever they might stay, go to the game and then come up to Wine Country.”

Sonoma County vintners will have their own “wine lounge” within a fan village in San Francisco, Bruce said. Instead of a typical four-day event, the San Francisco event will be held for eight days and is expected to draw 1 million visitors.

“That’s a big, big thing,” Bruce said.

In addition, the wines will be showcased at VIP and media events throughout the week preceding the Super Bowl, which will be held on Feb. 7, 2016. That includes being poured at an exclusive party on Super Bowl Sunday “for up to 2,000 of our most important partners and guests,” he said. Those partners include Google, Apple and Intel Corp.

The announcement was made Friday during the Sonoma County Wine & Tourism Marketing annual meeting, a pep rally-like event held by the Sonoma County Vintners, the Sonoma County Winegrowers and Sonoma County Tourism.

Financial terms were not disclosed but the host committee, a nonprofit group, announced last year it had the financial support of Sonoma County Tourism. Tim Zahner, chief marketing officer for Sonoma County Tourism, on Friday said the actual terms of the contract were confidential, but it included the provision to have Sonoma County wines as the official supplier.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, companies like Apple, Google and Intel have each chipped in $2 million so the cost of staging the Super Bowl would be offset without taxpayer support. Overall, the private sector support totaled $40 million as of June 2014.

EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this article said the fan village for next year’s Super Bowl would be located at the Embarcadero, information included in a Friday presentation by Keith Bruce, chief executive officer for the San Francisco Bay Area Super Bowl Host Committee. A spokeswoman for the host committee later said the location for the fan village has not been finalized.