During his NBA playing days, Sasha Vujacic knew about pouring in big shots. He did, after all, make more than 500 three-point shots over his 10-year career, which included six standout seasons with the Lakers.
The former sharpshooter from Slovenia continues to pour … albeit in a second career. He is a wine maker now, having successfully repped the area’s most popular hoops team to focusing on hops in a state established with a reputation as one of America’s most revered wine regions.
“I live in LA and the pandemic kind of made it easier, going to retirement and deciding to go away and walk away from basketball,” he said of first breaking into the industry.
“Away” is Paso Robles, where Aleksander Wine by S&G Estate is a growing, prosperous business led by the 38-year-old Vujacic, who last played in the NBA in 2016. Working hard at crafting the perfect Bordeaux blend, it is also a full-blown family business, with mom and dad all-in at company headquarters.
“I’m there probably once every two weeks,” Vujacic said. “When my parents need me too. We don’t have public tastings. We have by appointment only for our wine club members. A lot of wine club members are also sports fans.”
Sports, and basketball in particular, is Vujacic’s first passion. Slovenia is a small country in Central Europe. It is mostly mountainous and forested, and Slovenia did not join the European Union until 2004 after breaking away Yugoslavia along with Croatia in 1991.
It was in his homeland, and also when he played in Italy, Vujacic first became passionate about wine.
“The basic differences are the aging process and the picking during the harvest and how the harvest is done,” he said when asked to compare the European wine making process to that of the process in California. “But, overall, the biggest difference is European wines. Every grape represents the grape per se. When I’m having wine in California, sometimes wineries overreact with alcohol but not all of them.”
When he made his NBA debut with the Lakers during the 2004-05 season, he became only the fifth Slovenian to play to the league. Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic, one of the game’s top players today, is from Slovenia, as is LA Kings captain and two-time Stanley Cup winner Anze Kopitar.
“When I was a kid, my dream was to go to LA and play with the Lakers. And another dream was born over there. That dream was to own a family winery one day as I was just obsessed with wine,” he said inside the new Chairman’s Club at Crypto.com Arena where he was hosting a special pouring. “With the Lakers we won the championship, and I also realized the second dream.”
Vujacic said he and his parents (Goran and Ksenija) initially traveled all over California to find the best possible property. They wanted to make wine in the immediate future and for future generations. They secured a property investor in Paso Robles, located on the Salinas River approximately 30 miles north of San Luis Obispo and some 200 miles from LA. Aleksander Wine by S&G Estate (Aleksandar is Vujacic’s given first name) has five employees: Mom, dad, brother, sister and Sacha.
“Something that we cherish a lot is we decided to go quality over quantity. Everything we use has been grown here.”
Vujacic knows his time in Lakers purple and gold helps on the whole.
“It’s an honor. It’s an honor to be recognized for something you’ve done in the past, and anything you associate yourself with you want to make the best,” said Vujacic, a former first round choice of the Lakers and that organization’s record holder for the best three-point field goal percentage (.437) in a single season.
The highest honor for Vujacic on the court came in 2009 when the Lakers topped the Orlando Magic in the NBA Finals. Vujacic and The Lake Show did it again one year later to garner a second championship ring for the son of a Serbian basketball coach.
Vujacic last played competitive basketball (overseas) five years ago. He said he needed a couple of years to change his mindset from a player watching the game to someone who is eventually going to give back to future generations.
He added he was fortunate to spend as much time with Kobe Bryant, who he referred to as “a big brother,” as he did. He also knows he will be forever connected to the game of basketball, especially to the Lakers, and that the Lakers are his family.
Those experiences have only helped him in this second professional endeavor.
“The most important thing is our mindset. It is a worldwide mindset. We want to make low alcohol wines, the wines that are more approachable per se. Nothing against anybody else’s wine, but it’s just our palate, something that we’ve learned, and we age our wines for about three to four years. So, like I said before, we are all in with the quality and making the best every single year,” Vujacic explained. “I take pride in what we’re doing because it’s a family thing. Again, it is only five employees. We obviously get a crew to help us harvest and I’m all in. I’ve been all in from the beginning and I get to pay attention to what Pop’s is doing during the year with the with the grapes and crop and the vines.
“So, it’s really, truly a passion and a love for the wine that we created and something that we want to share with the people who appreciate the same and have the same mindset and appreciate hard work.”