Cougar legend Drew Bledsoe featured in Sports Illustrated

I recently opened up my copy of Sports Illustrated to see a very familiar face. Cougar great and and one of the leading passers in NFL history Drew Bledsoe was featured along with former No.2 overall pick and Seattle Seahawk Rick Mirer in an article of about the growing trend of athletes starting wineries. This was part of their annual "Where are they now" list.

The article goes into detail about the success that Bledsoe has had with his Doubleback Winery in Walla Walla. It also talks about how Mirer and Bledsoe kept in touch throughout their playing days and bonded over their love of wine. They would exchange the most rare bottles of wine, trying to one-up each other.

The article speaks to athletes getting into the wine business and raising the profile of the industry in the whole. Steve Burns, former director of the Washington State wine association, talks about the positives of athletes lending their names.

"In the early days I think people were skeptical of these guys’ intentions, but we’ve seen so many success stories," says Burns. "If you’re willing to do the whole thing, stand behind a table at a wine tasting, then let’s go."

And it sounds like Bledsoe is one of  the most successful of all of them.

Wine Spectator rated Doubleback’s first vintage, released in 2010, at 95 on a 100-point scale and listed it among the magazine’s top 100 wines in the world that year.

You can read the rest of the article here.

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