The 9 Best Celebrity-Owned Wineries
Question: what’s better than opening up a bottle of wine after a hard day’s work?
Answer: doing it knowing that the wine was produced by one of the Ghostbusters.
Celebrity wines are flourishing nowadays, borne largely out of a combination of people’s love of wine and people’s love of other, more famous people. These are our favourites.
Two Paddocks (Sam Neill)
Sam Neill, of Jurassic Park and Peaky Blinders fame, makes the top of this list (not that it’s in any particular order, mind you) based purely on the fact that he seems to be one of the only celebs who has actually thrown themselves as enthusiastically into wine-making as they have into the profession that made them famous. Established in 1993, Neill’s vineyards are situated in the Central Otago region of southern New Zealand, and produce a range of Pinot Noirs and a Riesling. By all accounts, they are excellent wines, and it says a lot that the proprietor’s personal Twitter account puts his duties as a vintner first and his fame as an actor second. That’s a pretty big deal.
Two Paddocks’ website also does a ‘Top 10 Tunes’ series, wherein a number of celebreties, from Stephen Fry to Alan Rickman to Richard E. Grant to Ian McKellen – and a lot more – offer up their ten favourite songs of the moment. We’re not sure why, but we love it.
See more: https://www.twopaddocks.com/
Château Miraval (Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie)
Château Miraval is an estate in Correns, Provence owned by two up-and-coming actors known as Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie. The two were married in the chapel there in 2014, and today use its 30 hectares of vineyards to produce three wines: a rosé (obviously, come on – it’s Provence), a Rolle and Grenach Blanc white varietal and a 100% Rolle white. All the grapes at Château Miraval are hand-picked, and the same careful dedication is apparently evident elsewhere in the production process – the Guide Hachette named it as one of France’s top 500 wine producers.
See more: http://miraval-provence.com/en
Francis Ford Coppola Winery (Francis Ford Coppola)
If you haven’t already figured it out, this one is owned by Francis Ford Coppola. You know, the Godfather fellow. The FFC Winery is located in Alexander Valley, California, and produces a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Chardonnay, a Pinot Noir and a Syrah, as well as some of the niftiest wine bottle labels we’ve ever seen, designed by Dean Tavoularis (who worked on the Godfather films and Apocalypse Now). We’ve looked around, though, and, sadly, it doesn’t look like they grow orange trees.
See more: https://www.francisfordcoppolawinery.com/
Diamond Estates Winery (Dan Aykroyd)
Aykroyd, star of the Ghostbusters films and Driving Miss Daisy, doesn’t actually own Diamond Estates, but he did team up with them to create a pretty vast series of wines, : Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot, Cabernet Merlot, Cabernet Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, and Vidal Icewine. The whites are mellow and refreshing; the reds, easy-drinking. Canadian wine may not be the most ubiquitous, but cracking out a bottle of it that’s also made by Dan Aykroyd is kind of a neat conversation-starter.
See more: http://www.diamondestates.ca/site/dan-aykroyd-niagara-wine
Pursued By Bear (Kyle McLachlan)
That wine you like is going to come back in style. Like Two Paddocks, Pursued By Bear is owned and fronted with an admirable degree of enthusiasm by Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan, who, partnered with Eric Dunham of Denham Cellars, has been producing wines (made from Cabernet Sauvignon) out of their winery in Walla Walla, Washington, since 2005. Whether anyone can drink a Pursued By Bear Cab Sav without instinctively proclaiming it to be “damn fine wine” is currently up for debate.
See more: http://www.pursuedbybearwine.com/
Pink and Blue for Two (Olivia Newton-John)
Pink and Blue for Two is wine brand created by Olivia Newton-John to help raise awareness to the breast and prostage cancer charity of the same name. The charity wine itself was launched by Newton-John’s nephew Emerson, and is a Merlot created in Sonoma, California. So it’s a three-part win: celebrity branding, great wine and it’s for charity. Score.
See more: http://pb42.org/
Il Cantante (Mick Hucknall)
We are furious that this wine isn’t called ‘Simply Red’.* Furious. Let’s just move on.
See more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simply_Red
Barrymore Wines (Drew Barrymore)
Barrymore Pinot Grigio is grown from the Monterey grape at the Carmel Road vineyard in California. Bright, crisp and with flavours of lemon, pear and melon, it’s a classically Italian-inspired Californian wine. A true viticultural enthusiast – you can probably trust Barrymore to deliver.
See more: http://www.barrymorewines.com/
Anta Bodegas (Antonio Banderas)
The world-famous Spanish actor bought half the shares of Anta Bodegas, in Ribera del Duero, back in 2009, and today the winery produces over something something something hey, you ever see this picture of Antonio Banderas watching a film in 3-D with a cinema full of cats?
See more: http://www.riberaruedawine.com/shop-wines/wineries/anta-banderas-277/
* N.B. – You had one job, Hucknall. That band gave you 25 years – a quarter of a century – of good times, and put your name on the map, and when life offers you the perfect way to commemorate that, you skimp out on it! Imagine the headlines: ‘Mick Hucknall releases Simply Red brand of wine’. You’d sell your entire vintage in a week. But no, you had to go legit. Well, thanks, Hucknall. Thanks a bunch.
