How Jimmy Butler has become one of the most prolific wine collectors in the NBA

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The great athletes are known to remember the smallest details of the games in the distant past with unusual clarity. Nba star Jimmy Butler Can tell you the day he had a sip of wine, what it was and with whom he drank it. In the years that followed, he increased his collection to around 11,000 bottles, including 7,500 in a tailor -made cellar in his house out of season in San Diego. Currently with the Golden State Warriors, The Tomball, Texas, a native of the League in the past 14 years, but prefers to spend its downtime in Europe vineyards, in particular Bolgheri, BordeauxAnd Bordeaux – Although he plans to spend more time Napa now that it is only a journey of his new team.

Butler to the most interesting oenophic history that we have ever heard. While many other wine lovers can be vague on the details of what brought them to the fruit of the vine, the Olympic gold medalist responds with certainty. “I can tell you the fucking day when I started drinking wine,” he said Robb report. “I started drinking wine on September 14, 2013.” The opportunity? Butler's 24th anniversary, but it was much more than a simple party bottle. “On September 13, 2013, Mark Wahlberg was in Chicago. Transformers, And you know, he travels with the entourage, it's not just a show, “explains Butler.” They contacted the Chicago Bulls because they wanted to play basketball in the training center, so he enters, he looks at all the photos on the head on the head, and to date, I still do not understand why he chose to play basketball with me. “”

After shooting hoops, the actor invited Butler to visit the film the next day. “The next day, it was my birthday, so I showed up on the set and he shouts” cut “, comes, makes me a hug, we start to launch football, and he says:” Come very quickly on my trailer “. So, we enter his trailer and he takes out the Rimowa wine case, the one that contains six bottles, and he releases a bottle of 2010 Sassica. So this is the very first wine I have ever had, so I'm partial. I am so biased; Sasssia is my favorite, I mean, come on, the very first time you drink wine in your life THE Mark Wahlberg, “he continues.” He opens the bottle and asks me: “Jimmy, do you drink wine?” And I'm not going to lie to the man, I said to myself: “no”, and then the guy of the Bulls pushed me and said to me: “Motherf **** R, if Mark Wahlberg asks if you drink wine, you drink wine”. And I was everything, “okay, yeah, I don't mind.” “”

The next bottle in the file was Château Lynch-Bages 2010, and Butler appreciated the experience so much that he went to his local binny the next day to collect some bottles, which did not go exactly as planned. “So when I go to the store, they know who I am, but they don't realize that I don't have a maximum contract,” he said. “They just see NBA player And they think I earn $ 10 billion, which I don't do, or I didn't certainly do it at the time. “While the cashier sounded his purchase, the shock of the stickers hit hard. I did not know how much I drank the wine or how expensive this habit would be to date.” It stops and adds, without any trace of regret, “but that's where it all started.”

Fascinated by the drink that had just entered his life, Butler started studying wine to fill the whites on different varieties, the best regions, the best vintages and stories behind the bottles. “It's so interesting, but there is not enough time in a life or even 10 lives to understand everything,” he said, stressing that in the two years following this first sip, he had become a collector.

Staying grateful to Wahlberg for having shared not only wine but of his passion, Butler likes to expose others to the bottles of his cellar. “Whenever I have these wine dinners, I like to share my wine with people who don't have the opportunity to drink wine like that,” he said. “Not only will that, it will give them a memory like '' guy, I do not know what this bottle was, but I remember each conversation that we had while we drink this bottle or what year it was.”

In addition to the teammates, Butler regularly opens bottles for his coaches, his old friends from the school and his students who help with his training sessions. With a deep cellar which includes each vintage from Sassica and bottles of several favorites dating back to 1940, Butler can create memories with only one for: “I ask:” Hey, what year were you born? ” What year have you graduated from the school? What year have you obtained a college? And okay, this is the bottle that we are going to drink, I have the perfect for you, boom, boom, boom. “Butler does more than simply trying to impress people; he wants to share the passion he has for wine. He does it” just so that they can understand what I feel every time I open one of these bottles and it's a special year for a special occasion. ”

While his cellar is deeply in the labels of Sassicaia and Bordeaux like Lynch-Bages, Château Margaux, CushyLafitte, Montrose and “this other where I obtained the large bottle, CO of Estournel”, Butler also benefits from other categories, including bottles of Australia, Spain and South Africa. He is not really a white track drinker but likes Château d'Yquem, and during a trip to Argentina, he learned the sister's property of Château Cheval Blanc, Terrazas de Los Andes, and continued Malbec Tear for several months. “I was in Argentina for the stars break, I was in Buenos Aires, we went to all restaurants, and I said to myself:” Hey, I need this wine, I need this wine, can you all show me good Argentinian wines, please? ” And my mind has been completely blown away, ”he says. “I started buying all Argentinian wines for six or seven months in a row.”

Just as he “blame” Wahlberg of having put him in wine, Butler says that it was his former teammate of Philadelphia 76ers (and the current coach of the Lakers) Jj Redick that he developed a taste for Pinot Noir And also started collecting Burgundy, in which he first made a trip to the region. “In Burgundy, there is really nothing else to do unless you want to go to Dijon and try mustard,” explains Butler. “It was like, you are just sitting there and you only have time, opportunities and space, and you talk and you talk about bottles on the bottles.” By comparing it to Bordeaux, which, according to him, is much heavier, Butler likes the lightness of the Burgunian Pinot Noir. “In Burgundy, I kept getting a second, third and fourth wind to continue,” he said.

Although the wine is just a hobby for him, although serious, he ventured into the commercial side of one of his other passions, the coffee. He launched his brand Bigface Coffee in his hotel room in Orlando during the Bulle NBA 2021 and now has a brick and mortar coffee in the Design district of Miami. Although he suggests that others could arrive abroad soon, he is deliberately mom on the details. Butler thinks that wine and coffee have a lot in common both in their conviviality and in the wide variety of expressions available. “When I tell you that wine is something that can be shared with everyone, just like coffee. When I tell you that you can have incredible conversations on wine, the same can be taken with coffee, ”he says. “I can have incredible stories and conversations and memories that are under construction through a coffee, then we can double and start the night on a glass of wine or two.” Unless you visit Wahlberg on the set and sip Sasssia in her trailer, it looks like the perfect day.

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