Royals ‘Proprietary Red’ wine now available in KC area liquor stores

Last year, Boulevard Brewing Co. commemorated the Royals’ historic run in the World Series with a tribute beer called Crown Town Ale.

Now — just in time for opening day — fans can toast Kansas City’s baseball team with red wine from a bottle emblazoned with the Royals’ official “KC” logo. Kansas City Royals Proprietary Red, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Zinfandel produced in California’s Paso Robles region, is now available in Kansas City-area liquor stores. The wine is a product of Wine by Design, a California-based marketing agency that also sells officially licensed Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs and New York Yankees wine (view the company’s complete “Club Series” of wines here).

“This year, they chose the Royals because of their national rise to prominence last year,” says Tom Dickson, who manages the wine’s local distributor, Classique Wine & Spirits.

Kansas City Royals Proprietary Red has a royal blue label, a cork decorated with the MLB logo, and a holographic baseball on the gold wrapper crowning the top of the bottle. The plum-colored wine has cocoa and dark fruit aromas, and flavors of cherry and chocolate ganache. It’s sweet, like Blue October, but not cloyingly so.

The wine averages $18.99 per bottle and is sold at roughly 40 liquor stores on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metro area, including Gomer’s Fine Wine & Spirits, Lukas Liquor Superstore, Riverside Red X, Hy-Vee stores and, fittingly, Royal liquor stores. Sorry, Kansas: This Royals wine is not sold in the Sunflower State. But it is available in three other Missouri cities: Columbia, Springfield and, soon, St. Joseph.

The Royals wine is selling almost as fast as Terrance Gore runs at Lukas Liquor Superstore, 13657 Washington St. On Saturday, the liquor store invited former Royals outfielder Willie Wilson to sign bottles of the wine for customers.

“We blew through 24 cases,” says wine supervisor Dennis Schaefer. That’s 288 bottles.

The red blend is also popular at Gomer’s Midtown, 3838 Broadway.

“There’s such a Royals fervor that anything with their name on it will sell well,” says owner Jack Probst, who says customers have also been asking for Royals koozies.

“I’m going to try to find some today,” Probst said Monday morning.

This story was originally published April 6, 2015 at 12:14 PM with the headline "Royals ‘Proprietary Red’ wine now available in KC area liquor stores."