Now that’s a 19th hole: The Players Championship, TPC Sawgrass, March 14-17, 2024

Our mission at SwigCoach is combining great golf and wine, so it’s an enormous vindication when we find a host venue with both. Such is certainly the case at Pebble Beach, but we were gratified to find a strong list at Nineteen, the main restaurant at TPC Sawgrass.  While the best golfers in the world are gulping for air on the tee box at 17, one can happily gulp from an excellent, geographically broad list that specializes in California and Bordeaux, supplemented with appealing options in Burgundy, Italy and Spain. There are verticals from a variety of top producers including a 10-vintage collection of Dominus, some Comte de Vogue Musigny and Harlan. We found at least one world class wine at less than retail. This place is a 19th hole worthy of the name.   

Restaurant Medure takes a distant second. The list is plenty big enough and with patience you can wade into it and find something worth drinking, even if for the most part it’s over-priced. There are a few high-end surprises, like a ’17 Harlan that’s a few hundred dollars less than at Nineteen, but if you can’t spell Harlan should you really be allowed to carry it and charge $2900?  

No-see-ums

The list at the Seahorse Grille at Ponte Vedra Inn and Club is well-regarded but not visible to the public, as is the case with the restaurant itself since you can’t eat there if you aren’t a guest.  The restaurant also takes the award for the most unintentionally creepy cover photo in the continental US.

We found no retail stores in the area with noteworthy online inventory. Royal Palm Village Wines & Tapas has a dine in/takeout approach with generous corkage policies. They say they have 1200 bottles on premise and the “friendly, knowledgeable staff has tasted most of the wines,” which is good.