This happens to be the time of year when three of my loves converge: grilling, football, and wine. Not necessarily in that order. Before you point out that you see plumes of grill smoke coming off my back porch all year long, let me explain. I admittedly do cook outdoors year-round. Some of my favorites, however, like brisket, are difficult to pull off in summer, when the grill thermometer is already reading above temperature before you preheat.

But autumn is coming, and it does not care whether you take your pigskin on Saturday or your gridiron on Sunday. The air turns cooler and comfortable, the kind of weather that makes standing over a fire a pleasure again, and somewhere a game is on that matters more than it should. A day like that wants wine that keeps up with a shifting afternoon, from the first cold pour in the sun to the last warm sip by the embers. Here are four that walk the whole arc, and a couple may surprise you more than an underdog on the road.

Peter Zemmer Vernatsch Schiava 2024, Alto Adige, Italy ($17)

Start while the pregame is still on, and surprisingly, with a red you are going to put in the refrigerator. If you have never heard of Schiava, you are in good company. It is the everyday red of Alto Adige, the mountainous, German-speaking corner of northern Italy where they call it Vernatsch. It makes pale, feather-light reds meant to be drunk young and cool. Peter Zemmer’s has the refreshment of a rosé and the soul of a red: bright cherry and pomegranate, white pepper, a whisper of dried herb, and tannins so fine you barely notice them. Up in the Alps they drink it with speck, their smoked mountain ham, and a board of cold cuts, which is really their version of what we do while the grill is warming up. Give it twenty minutes in the fridge and hand it appetizers or even the first sausages off the fire. If you think a red cannot be chilled, this is the bottle that fixes you.

Santa Rita Floresta Chardonnay 2022, Limarí Valley, Chile ($25)

For better or worse, everyone knows Chardonnay. Fewer people know that some of the best value in it right now comes out of Chile, and fewer still could find the Limarí Valley on a map. It sits in the cool, foggy north of the country, close enough to the Pacific that ocean fog does the same work it does in far more famous places. This one hails from a limestone-rich single-vineyard, producing barely six thousand bottles. What makes it worth your time is texture. It is dry and tangy yet full-bodied and almost viscous, with orchard fruit, a squeeze of lime, and a savory, toasted-nut note underneath. That weight and nuttiness are no accident: they come from time on the lees, the spent yeast left after fermentation and stirred back through the wine to build body and a gentle, bread-crust richness. It is the white for anyone who swears they only drink red at a cookout. In Chile it would meet grilled fish or whatever came off the parrilla; here, pour it with grilled chicken, pork, or sweet corn charred at the edges.

Ehlers Estate, The Portrait 2023, St. Helena, California ($73)

When the game is on and the main course comes off the fire, this is the splurge. The Portrait is a Bordeaux blend in the classic mold, eighty-seven percent Cabernet Sauvignon with small measures of Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec, and Merlot filling the corners. The wine comes from a certified-organic estate in St. Helena whose profits, in one of wine’s stranger footnotes, help fund heart research. What Cabernet brings here is structure without swagger: dark fruit, blackberry and black cherry wrapped in allspice and cinnamon, with a fine, ripe, sandy tannin that is fully knit in. Serious, but never heavy, which is exactly what a ribeye or a rack of ribs wants when the stakes on the field and on the plate are high. This is the bottle you open when the day, and your team, has earned it.

Barrel Oak Chocolate Lab 2022, Virginia ($48)

End the night by the fire with a touch of something sweet. Barrel Oak is a famously dog-friendly Virginia winery, and the name Chocolate Lab winks at both the breed and what waits in the glass. It is a port-inspired dessert red made from Chambourcin, one of the hardy hybrids that thrive in Virginia’s humidity, then aged in used bourbon barrels. The nose is dried red fruit and chocolate, with roasted coffee and sweet pipe tobacco that owe more to the cask than the grape itself. The label calls it sweet. My palate read it closer to medium, the dark plummy fruit and acid backbone keep the sugar in check so it never feels cloying. Pour a small glass with the s’mores you talked yourself into once the game was decided and the fire had burned to embers.

The Common Thread

What links these four is not a grape or a country. It is a single good day and its full arc. Autumn’s real gift is range: a red chilled enough to sweat the glass, a white with enough spine to stand up to the grill, a serious bottle for the moment that matters, and something warm and sweet for an evening bookend. You do not need all four on the same day, and you certainly do not need to drink them in any dictated order. Maybe you chill the Ehlers, rules be damned, or pour the Chardonnay last. Good. The whole point of a day like this is that it belongs to you, and so do your preferences. Buy the one that fits your afternoon, fire up the grill, and let the game sort itself out.

Think how you drink.