(FC) - The Philadelphia Phillies Reserve 2012 Central Coast Proprietary Red wine “balances power and finesse, much like the Phillies lineup, while going long on the flavor fans demand.” The Chicago Cubs 2012 Central Coast red “is a mix of players, combined to make a bold, fruit-forward blend whose whole--like the Cubs--is greater than the sum of its parts.” And the New York Yankees 2011 Cabernet has the “richness, depth, and character following Yankees tradition.” With muscular descriptions like these, one half expects the bottles to jump out of the crate, suit up, and start belting homers.

The tasting notes come from Major League Baseball, which sees team wine as a new, blossoming seven-figure business. But the product is also a creative solution to a market challenge: Fans will pony up for team-branded bottles of alcohol, but the MLB can’t violate its very lucrative, exclusive beer deal with Budweiser.

“Chances are there are a lot of wine enthusiasts that are baseball fans,” says Michael Napolitano, MLB's Vice President of Consumer Products, Hard Goods. (There is also a VP of Soft Goods, hence the clarification.) And that's why, last Wednesday, the league was pouring from its new collection at the Fan Cave, its event space in downtown Manhattan. This was a chance for fans and media to try the wine, but also, quite likely, to just get used to the sight of people kicking back and watching baseball while gently holding wine glass stems.

Team-branded wines are an extension of MLB’s two-year-old program that produced event-related booze--championship champagne for the World Series winner, and red and white All-Star game wines. This season, seven teams--the Giants, Yankees, Mariners, Red Sox, Rangers, Phillies, and Cubs--became the first to hawk custom blends. Bottle prices cost $25 to $30 on average. While the Yankees pull grapes for its Riesling from the Finger Lakes region and the Mariners source from the Columbia Valley, most of the wines are made in central or northern California. (Were you expecting a locally produced chardonnay from Dallas?)

League execs are so far thrilled by the response. The initial order across all seven teams was 11,000 cases. High demand led to a recent second order of 14,000 more cases. (The Yankees accounted for 6,000 total cases and the Giants requested 4,000.) The bottles are sold online, in local wine shops, and will soon be available in larger national chains, including Whole Foods and Costco. At the current price points, the retail value of the operation is just under $10 million.