Every Team in the NBA Should Have Its Own Special-Edition Wine
In early 2018, ESPN The Magazine blew wide open the sports story of the century: The highly skilled athletes who dribbled balls across the court every week were also low-key wine connoisseurs. The Cleveland Cavaliers bonded over day trips to Napa and wine-pairing dinners. LeBron James was an unstoppable glossary of wine-related knowledge. Steph Curry and Kevin Love swore by the Vivino wine app. Carmelo Anthony wanted to develop a somm's palate. Dwayne Wade even started his own wine label, D Wade Cellars.
A year later, the connection between wine and the NBA continues to deepen—and not just because D Wade Cellars now has a 2018 rosé. On Tuesday, the Portland Trail Blazers and Oregon's Adelshiem winery released two limited-edition bottles of wine together to commemorate the Trail Blazers' 50th season this year. There's a Chardonnay and a Pinot Noir, both packaged in bottles with specially designed labels that are legitimately awesome (and especially great swag for Portland fans).
Adelsheim's 50th Anniversary wine is one of the first partnerships of its kind—an NBA franchise paired with a winery—and it certainly seems to be the first of this scope. In 2016, the Philadelphia 76ers partnered with a winery to make throwback championship wine (likely to remind fans of better times), and the Sacramento Kings were honored with a special sparkling wine from AV Angle Vineyards. Neither of those wines is available now.
Both of the Trail Blazers wines are sustainably produced in Oregon's Chehalem Mountains, and Adelsheim will donate 10 percent of the proceeds to the Trail Blazers Foundation; you can buy the wine on the winery's website today, as well as at the Moda Center where the Trail Blazers play, by the glass.
And now we know for certain: Every NBA team should have a partnership with a local winery to produce special-edition reds and whites for fans and players. Even the New Orleans Pelicans. There's got be at least one winery down in Louisiana.
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