 If you're a basketball nut like me, you're going to be gearing up to watch the latest episodes of The Last Dance Tonight. I think I found the perfect pairing. We're going to talk about it in this video. Oh, welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horkey. Still locked down here in Zagreb, Croatia where I've been the last three months. My lockdown throw is reaching epic levels. It's been about three and a half months as I cut it. I'm excited to cut it next week, but that's not the most exciting thing. I'm a huge basketball fan and tonight I'm getting geared up to watch episodes seven and eight of The Last Dance. If you're not into sports or basketball, it's a 10-part documentary. I went with a red wine because obviously the whole documentary is about the last 97-98 season with the Chicago Bulls. And their color is red. So I thought I'd talk a little bit about that and some wines you might want to drink while watching these episodes. And I think I found some people would be drinking beer, but why not be more classy and drink a little bit more wine? I think I have the perfect solution. I went with a red wine because obviously the whole documentary is about the last 97-98 season with the Chicago Bulls. The color is red, so I think that's the perfect pairing. And I picked a genre of wines that can be found all around the world. There should be no excuses. You should be able to find some of these wines wherever you are. And that's Cote d'Orone from France, from southern France. So one of the most important regions in France for wine is the Rhone. Cote d'Orone is kind of on the base level of the production there. Like basketball, me and Cote d'Orone go back a long time. I got a few funny stories about Cote d'Orone. I remember when I was first getting into wine, I was in a restaurant. I was on a date and I looked at the sommelier, or not a fancy restaurant, a server. And I looked at the wine list and I said, yes, can I have a bottle of Cote d'Orone? The sommelier looked at me kind of cynically and said, Cote d'Orone, made me feel like crap. But so anyway, if you're a sommelier out there, don't do that to your customers. Another thing is I started really liking the flavors of Cote d'Orone. And I remember as I stepped up and I moved up into the world of wine, I was telling one of my friends that I really like the wines from Cote d'Orone. So she got me a gift. She got me a mature bottle of Chateau de Pup. And back then I didn't even know what that was. I remember she gave me the bottle I looked at it. I was trying to figure it out. I was like, how is this a Cote d'Orone? We'll talk a little bit more about that. So anyways, these wines are widely distributed, offer some of the best values in France or in the world for that matter. Primarily in the South, they're going to be made of their GSMs, I mean primarily Grenache, Cera, Morvedre. Although you won't see other grapes like Carignan, since so other types of grapes in the blends. You're going to see three types of levels of Cote d'Orone. And you're going to see basic Cote d'Orone kind of at the bottom. Cote d'Orone village, a step up. And then there's Cote d'Orone crews like Lyrac, Rastau, Chateau de Pup technically is a Cote d'Orone crew as well. As you move up the pyramid, the quality supposedly gets better. But there's some beautiful Cote d'Orone wines at the base level just labeled Cote d'Orone that are delicious too. One kind of characteristic about these wines is they're going to be they're going to be primarily have these strawberry baked cherry type. Now it's right now I'm drinking the Domaine de Père de la Glace Cote d'Orone 2018. These are usually sold on the younger side meant to be drunk right away. Like I was talking about cherry, strawberry, sometimes a little bit of meat, a little pepper, this is kind of classic Cote d'Orone. A hint of complexity, but they have soft hands. They're meant to be drunk young. So this means these wines are going to be crowd pleasers. Go fantastic with a pasta. So I think they go a little bit better with grilled meats. These are perfect barbecue wines. So if you're watching the last dance outside, grilling up on a barbecue might want to grab a few bottles of Cote d'Orone. Here are a few things to look for. All these bottles I have here are actually wines made by producers of Chetnoff de Pops. Chetnoff de Pops are real prestigious wines in the Southern Rhone. And if you buy Cote d'Orone from good established producers, the quality can be quite high. Ever from this producer, we have a this is a very famous producer, Domaine du Pégao. They make some of the most classic age-worthy Chetnoff de Pops. This is the Cote d'Orone village, that second level. It shows some of their characteristics. This is also a classic producer, Domaine du Pégao. This is Andre Brunel, the Cote d'Orone 2017, looking forward to trying that. And on the flip side, you're going to have the Cote d'Orone crew villages. And there's some really good stuff coming out. This is the Chetnoff de la Jardine resto 2017. The 16 was excellent. I can't wait to get into the 17. And then Lirac, which is right across the Rhone river from Chetnoff de Pops. This is also the Domaine du Pégao de la Glace. My French is terrible. And also this is Chetnoff Saint-Roch. This is the Lirac actually made by the Jardine family. So check these wines out. I'm really excited for tonight to be drinking them while I'm watching this. If you don't know, if you watch my channel, you know I'm a huge fan of basketball. Basketball was probably one of my first passions right up there with travel and what we do now in terms of wine. Even though I've got a funny body shape, I'm rather short and squat. Maybe 5'11", 180 cm on a good day. I did play in high school, did play in high level. I've been on the court, been in some pickup games with past, present, and even future NBA players. So I've definitely seen my share of good basketball, though I wasn't really good enough to make it to the next level. If you've been hiding under a rack or you're too young or you don't know Michael Jordan, that's what this documentary is all about. It's really an incredible journey. I see it as almost like watching home videos, but without the awkwardness of me actually being in the video because during the documentary, the first parts were going on 7 and 8 tonight. 1 through 6 is great because they play music that was popular back in the 90s and all those images, watching all those games. I watched nearly every single game when I was a kid. Even though I grew up in Detroit, was supposed to be a Pistons fan. Pretended to kind of like them, but always just drawn towards the bulls because Jordan had such a magnetic personality. And I loved Scottie Pippin. Pippin was actually my favorite player. I saw two of them, I saw both of them play live. And I'll tell you what, if you haven't watched an NBA game close up and you're just a mere mortal, you quickly figure out that you could never, ever, ever play in the NBA because of the size, speed, and skill level. So check it out. If you guys are hard, if anybody's a hardcore geek like me, I could get really geeky in breaking down the episodes. Maybe we could do some side videos or some kind of live event. So you'll have to let me know in the comments if it's something that you're interested in. Something that you might be interested in. Check out these wines from Cote de Rhone. I think that you're going to have, you're going to really enjoy them. You know, in the price point, you're going to find these wines at the Cote de Rhone level. You can get wines that are just labeled Cote de Rhone like two bucks sometimes if you're in Europe or if you're getting cheap wines. Those aren't ones I recommend drinking. I think to get something a little bit nicer, you're going to spend more 10 to 15 US dollars. Cote de Rhone Village, like this one sometimes goes up to 20, 25. The same with the crews. The other crews down there, also wines that are incredibly complex. And go to your store. Ask, if you see a Cote de Rhone, ask the person that's working there, does this producer also make a shot enough to pop or does he make a Cote de Rhone? If the producer does, it's a pretty good bet that the Cote de Rhone will be of high quality. Check it out. Enjoy the last dance. Keep watching. Maybe we can talk about it a little bit later and you can leave some of your comments below. And guys, enjoy. If you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. Click the bell so you know when new episodes will come out. And I will see you in the next episode.