buckets + barrels: a space for the sippers and shooters
Champagne showers in locker rooms. Wine fridges in the NBA bubble. Pro hoopers starting wine brands. The perfect wine pairing for in-arena nachos.
It’s the content you didn’t know you needed.
“I think a wine palate is very similar to athletic ability.”
-Maureen Downey, wine expert and consultant (Sour Grapes, 2016)
The inspiration for buckets + barrels goes back to 2020 when I started my formal wine study through the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET). For me, the name Steven Spurrier rang a bell as both the “Head Ball Coach” and the name behind the legendary Paris Wine Tasting of 1976. SOMM TV featured the “NFL Wine Guy” Will Blackmon. Decades before co-authoring the bestseller American Wine, Linda Murphy began her writing career in sports, breaking barriers as the second woman working in an MLB locker room. The same questions of labor, globalization, class, and identity seeped into every glass.
Basketball, though, felt particularly well-suited for comparative study and consumption.
Maybe it was Raj Parr’s epic blind tasting wins while wearing a Kobe “Mamba” hat…
…or maybe it was bumping into Channing Frye at a winery in Oregon.
Perhaps it was when wine labels connected their brands to the “cool” of basketball.
Ultimately, buckets + barrels aspires to do what basketball and wine both accomplish beautifully:
tell an amazing story
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Photo credit: Dr. Amira Rose Davis