For a man who enjoys foreign films, Dostoyevsky and fine food, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich's passion for wine is one of the few things about him that makes sense. That this rare blend of former spy turned basketball savant owns a wine label as equally difficult to decipher also follows.

What doesn't dovetail is why a man whose disdain for media has been so well documented would name this wine for a muckraking journalist's brilliance, even if Jacob Riis wrote the words around the same time Dr. James Naismith invented the game Popovich inevitably mastered.

Actually, the quote that adorns the back label of each Rock & Hammer Pinot Noir vintage also covers the walls of San Antonio's locker room in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish, paraphrasing Popovich's philosophy in a manner no writer has accomplished since.

"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it — but all that had gone before."

No two sentences better explain the Spurs coach's art of cultivating greatness on Texas courts and Oregon vineyards, and nobody pairs the two like Popovich. Red Auerbach smoked an Hoyo de Monterrey victory cigar. Popovich sips his winning Rock & Hammer Pinot Noir.

In much the same way San Antonio's defensive schemes are designed to slow the LeBron James and Kevin Durants of the NBA world, growing Pinot Noir grapes requires painstaking practice and a delicate attention to detail best described in the 2004 film "Sideways."

It's a hard grape to grow, as you know. It's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It's not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and thrive even when it's neglected. Pinot needs constant care and attention, and in fact it can only grow in these really specific little tucked away corners of the world. And only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot's potential can then coax it into its fullest expression. Then, oh, its flavors, they're just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and ancient on the planet.

It's impossible to ignore the parallels between Popovich's Spurs and his Pinot Noir. In the unlikeliest of NBA cities, his sustained success as the longest tenured coach in American sport coincided with the growing popularity of a grape found flourishing along Oregon's coast.

As we learned from Jack McCallum's wonderful Sports Illustrated feature last year, Popovich's penchant for both coaching and wine began at California's Moffett Federal Airfield, where he served as both an officer in the Air Force and captain of the U.S. Armed Forces Basketball Team during Napa Valley's 1970s wine boom. And just as good fortune landed Tim Duncan in San Antonio for Popovich's first full season on the Spurs bench, an opportune tasting bore similar fruit at the only Willamette Valley winery with a basketball hoop.

While Popovich was winning his first NBA title in 1999, Bill and Deb Hatcher still owned Domaine Drouhin, a winery in Oregon's Dundee Hills with roots in Burgundy, France. As TrueHoop's Henry Abbott first relayed, Deb Hatcher had coached prep girls' basketball and installed a hoop in her husband's office. Burgundy and basketball being two of Popovich's great passions (Burgundy's Domaine de la Romanee-Conti has sold various vintages at auction for more than $10,000 and is Pop's white whale of wines), he took a detour through the Portland suburb during a road trip.

As the story goes, Bill Hatcher, a worldly winemaker who left Wall Street behind, had no idea who the Spurs coach was, and — Popovich being Popovich — the two became fast friends. Years later, when the Hatchers launched A to Z Wineworks, Pop reportedly became the leading outside investor. In 2003, as the Spurs won their second title, A to Z landed its first vintage on Food & Wine magazine's Best American Pinot Noirs under $20. The vino has since cracked Wine Spectator's Top 100 list twice. In other words, it's good, especially at $12 a bottle.

As part of Popovich's arrangement with the Hatchers, who also run Rex Hill Vineyards, the winemakers also bottled a private label Pinot Noir solely for the coach's use. Thus, Rock & Hammer was born. You won't find it on your local wine shop's shelves or rated on any of the countless wine websites, because unless you find yourself in Popovich's inner circle or had $760 to blow on an autographed 2011 bottle entered into auction last year, you've likely never tasted it.