Fresh from an NBA title run, New York Knicks shooting guard Josh Hart traded the parade route for French wine country. In a conversation with Condé Nast Traveler, Hart explains how a 10-day European trip with his wife Shannon and a group of friends — taking in Capri, Rome and Paris — peaked with four days in Bordeaux, and why the region beat everything else on the itinerary.
Hart's interest in wine goes back to his Lakers days, when he'd sip it on team flights alongside LeBron James and Rajon Rondo. Bordeaux, he says, felt like stepping through a history book: cellars holding vintages back to the 1880s, and old wine caves with mildew-covered walls that he describes as a dream for anyone serious about wine. Over four days the group hit around seven wineries.
The standout was Château Lynch-Bages, where co-owner Kinou Cazes-Hachemian set up a semi-blind tasting after lunch — the group knew which wines were in play, but not the order they'd be poured. Six numbered glasses arrived, including a 2018 Château Haut-Bataille and a 2010 Lynch-Bages, with tasters writing down their guesses as they went. The only white, Blanc de Lynch-Bages 2025, was easy to spot. Hart claims he scored 100 percent, out-guessing even his host, and walked away with a pin reading "Keep Calm and Drink Lynch-Bages."
There's a redemption arc here too. Years earlier, early in his wine education, Hart's wife ran a two-bottle semi-blind test at home — a 2016 Château Pontet-Canet against a Napa wine from Nine Suns — and he fluffed it. She's never let him forget it. Bordeaux settled the score.
Hart and his wife are already eyeing Burgundy and Champagne for next year, but he says he'd return to Bordeaux tomorrow, praising the history, the hospitality and the long lunches and dinners as much as the wines themselves.
Why should this matter to you? Hart's trip is a decent template for a first Bordeaux visit. Four days is enough time to work through seven châteaux without rushing, and the big names around the region — Lynch-Bages among them — offer guided tastings and lunches you can book ahead. The semi-blind format he describes is easy to copy at home or on the road: pick a few wines from the same region, have someone pour them unlabelled, and see how your palate holds up. It turns a tasting into a game, and it clearly worked on a professional athlete with a competitive streak.
If you're wine-curious but not yet an expert, Bordeaux rewards beginners precisely because of that structure — visits are typically organised around a single château, so each stop teaches you something specific. And as Hart found, the region's appeal isn't only in the glass. The cellars, the slow meals and the sense of drinking history are the part people remember.
Credit: Condé Nast Traveler
