What's Wrong With Celebrity Wine?

Sometimes the joke is on us.

Nice Airport summer 2019

One of the more remarkable bullshit quotes ever fed to me over more than 40 years in journalism came from Brad Pitt.

In 2014 I was working on a cover story for Wine Spectator about Pitt and his then-wife Angelina Jolie’s rosé wine project at their recently purchased sprawling Provence estate, Chateau Miraval.

At the time it sounded great. The first two vintages, produced in partnership with the Perrin family of Château de Beaucastel fame, scored well in blind tastings. The property and vineyards restored and developed over decades by American engineer Tom Bove, was ancient, gorgeous and already producing sought-after wines.

And Pitt—whom I never met—seemed so into it—terroir and all.

“I’m a farmer now,” He said in the quotes e-mailed to me through Marc Perrin in answer to a set of written questions. “I love learning about the land and which field is most suitable for which grape, the drama of September and October: Are we picking today? Where are the sugar levels? How is the acidity? Is it going to rain? It’s been a schooling for me…”

Great quote and good fun. I remember Provence vignerons telling me. “He can be a farmer here, and I will go to Hollywood and be Brad Pitt enhhh?”

Anyway, Brad seemed sincere on paper. I understood what it’s like to fall in love with a place in this part of the world. And If Château Miraval had remained a wine estate producing around 100k bottles a year from its own grapes, everything would have been copasetic.

But after all the initial buzz, everything changed. And I began to feel that they’d hoodwinked us all.

Why?

From the start, Jolie-Pitt-Perrin bought organic grapes from neighboring growers—about 30 percent of the total haul, Perrin told me. Miraval under French law could no longer use the word “Chateau” on its labels because such a reference apllies to estate-grown wine. Then things took a turn. Brad’s farmer schtick was over. Miraval began buying tons and tons more grapes and even wines to fill those lovely distinctively stout bottles.

These days — after the Brangelina divorce, the Fleur de Mirval negociant rosé Champagne partnership, Brad’s going sober in AA—Miraval is pumping out the juice to the tune of 4 million bottles of the last-released vintage (2024) of the mainstay rosé, according to Wine Spec.

I understand there is temptation. You build a brand and have demand. Business 101. Why risk trying to grow all those grapes? But this is the equivalent of “Chateau Margaux," becoming simply “Margaux” and filling 50 times more bottles across Bordeaux.

I suppose the good news is that prices have stuck around $25. There’s a lot of the stuff on sale racks in airport duty free shops next to the billboards of American actors lending their faces to hawk perfume.

And what for? Do movies not pay anymore?

The truth is that much of the world of fashion and celebrity is a dirty game. Just like fashion brands sell $1,500 t-shirts, Miraval still tries to make us think the wines are from Brad’s house.

Miraval’s website is a study in the word millefeuille of high marketing . I quote:

“LAND DEDICATED TO GREATNESS, TO ART. THE LAND OF LEGENDARY WINE. LAND THAT COMMANDS ATTENTION, BUILDS CHARACTER AND ANCHORS INSPIRATION TO BECOME THE EXTRAORDINARY DOMAIN OF POSSIBILITY.”

Whose land and which vineyard it coyly doesn’t say. It goes on:

“MIRAVAL’S LAND IS ORGANIZED INTO DRY STONE TERRACES. EACH VINEYARD IS LOCATED AT AN AVERAGE ALTITUDE OF 350 METERS. PERFECTLY ELEVATED FOR A SOARING BALANCE OF HARMONY AND FRESHNESS.”

You get the point. It’s all part of that Hollywood entrepreneur squishy-squish talk like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop or Cameron Diaz’s “clean” wine label Avaline from grapes sourced from Italy, France and Spain.

I have nothing against celebrities or celebs making and selling stuff — as long as it’s done with ethics, transparency and a bit of humility.

I understand that some people may want to buy stuff from their favorite athlete or actor. And that some wineries and regions are looking for innovative ways to sell product. We are primates after all and primates are impressionable. Two decades ago a study titled “Monkeys Pay Per View” showed Rhesus monkey males would pay in fruit juice to look at photos of the faces of dominant males or the hindquarters of females. In another study Chimps preferred looking at photos of other Chimps to photos of bananas…I digress….

George Lucas’ Chateau Margűi makes modest amounts of wine in Provence. And after chatter of an imminent rosé release set for 2024 by Brad’s pal George Clooney under the name Bastide Saint-Georges, I’ve seen nothing. (Anybody know what’s up?) Mary J. Blige’s “Sun Goddess” Pinot Grigio partnership in Friuli with the Fantinel family seems to put everything on the table for the public to see.

The wines may not interest me, but who cares? Where I have a problem when celebrities start hustling us. And there seems to be alot of that.

The difficulty in assessing the legitimacy of celebrity wine is the big sliding scale between buying a vineyard which makes wine and using wine as another “white label” branding like Megan Markle’s “As Ever” California rosé. For those of us who care about wine, provenance is important, yet those details are often buried under the gloss.

I’ll conclude by stating the obvious — that celebrities in wine aren’t necessarily a bad thing, and can even be a force for good. French actress Carole Bouquet’s Sangue d’Oro (now partnered with Pasqua) for passito on the Sicilian island of Pantelleria is an exemplary project deserving praise. It’s a more than 20-year year heroic restoration of old vines I wrote about in my book Palmento.

Over the years I’ve interviewed and ate with other celeb winemakers like Sting and wife Trudie Styler at their Il Palagio in Tuscany, and John Malkovich at his Les Quelles de la Coste in Provence’s Luberon (including an eccentric blend of Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon). These are rare boutique wines I’ve never seen actually seen in a wine shop or on a wine list. I doubt either is breaking even. Does that make them cooler? Maybe.

Sting (who at the time did have a side business buying wine for a second label and does put his signature on bottles) was surprisingly part of the community, giving an annual free gig at Palagio’s farm store (where honey and olive oil are sold). Malkovich (whose LQLC doesn’t even have a website) joked about wine being a masochistic enterprise. Both of them fell into wine as a way to maintain their land. I respect that.

Neither, thankfully, called himself a farmer.

At home with Malkovich 2019