"So you really think you can match each of these four sedans with specific wines?" I ask EOS Winery managing director Kerry Vix. "Sure," he responds, raising his eyebrows, glancing from car to car, already toying with the possibilities. "Wines are often paired with art, for instance. Why not with cars?"
We're nearly shivering in a dim, cave-cool aging room surrounded by towering columns of slumbering oak-ribbed barrels, watching as every few minutes our photographer's strobe lights flash-illuminate the four V-8 sedans----BMW 545i, Cadillac STS, Infiniti M45, and Mercedes-Benz E500--we've brought to EOS's Paso Robles home. Around us, in countless oak chrysalises, embryonic cabernets and merlots are glacially transforming into liquid magic. The strobes flash again.
"That Cadillac, for instance, is the American dream. A good wine match might be our Zinfandel Port. The origins of the zinfandel grape go to Italy and Yugoslavia, but for all intents and purposes, it's an all-American grape now, classy, fun, and bold." As he speaks, Vix studies the Sigma platform-based STS with the 4.4-liter Northstar engine capable of delivering 320 horsepower to its five-speed automatic transmission. The STS is a big, rakish sedan composed of acutely beveled bodywork suggestive of a recessive Batmobile gene burrowed deep in its DNA.
A look at the window sticker suggests a bat of the vampire variety, however. The regular STS V-8 barcodes at a conceivable $47,720, but our sedan carries a blood-sucking $11,065 luxury performance package (you could buy an entire Kia Rio for similar money) that backloads nearly every conceivable nicety into the STS. Included are (deep breath) 17-inch polished alloy wheels with 235/50 Michelin Pilots up front, 255/45s on the rear, limited-slip differential, sunroof, leather and wood interior accents, four-way lumbar adjustment, tire-pressure monitoring, Magnaride shocks. And that's just for openers.
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