The old adage ‘celebrity sells‘ applies to the world of red wine as much as any other area of industry and today more than ever before celebrities are applying their selling power to bottles of red wine. Some celebrities are happy just to have their image and name emblazoned on a bottle, others take wine-production as seriously as their ‘day jobs’, with their own vineyards and some well-received wine.
While musicians including Simply Red front-man Mick Hucknall, Sir Cliff Richard, the Rolling Stones and Madonna have all given their name to some fast-selling bottles of red wine, the film industry has produced some of the most serious players in the celebrity wine field. Big screen stars Dan Aykroyd, Paul Newman and Gerard Depardieu have all produced some well-received red wine and legendary film director Francis Ford Coppola is becoming as well-known for his wines as his films. Newman and Aykroyd are relative newcomers to the world of wine production, but nobody could accuse Coppola and Depardieu of jumping on the celebrity wine-growing bandwagon. Both have been producing wine for decades and consider tending to their vineyards their ‘real’ vocations.
Depardieu, who considers himself to be a winemaker first, actor second, certainly has a nose for wine (if you’ll excuse the pun).
Producing wines since the 1980s, Depardieu now owns vineyards in Argentina, Spain and Morocco as well as Bordeaux in his native France. Fittingly, the actor produces all the bottles on the wine list at the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain and his red wine has been particularly well-received by critics. One reviewer commented that Depardieu’s red wines reflected the character of the actor himself – being ‘earthy and honest’. Depardieu has been quoted as saying that he prefers working with wine makers to film makers ‘because they don’t talk as much’ and owes much of the success of his red wine to joint ventures with renowned winemakers Bernard Magrez and Michel Rolland.
Like Depardieu, film director Coppola sees wine making as a way of life rather than a mere sideline to a career in the film industry. Although his daughter, fellow director Sofia Coppola, has lent her name to some canned sparkling wine that is best avoided by red wine enthusiasts, the wines of Francis Ford Coppola are as renowned as his films. The acclaimed director of such classic films as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, Coppola’s Niebaum-Coppola vineyard in the Napa Valley wine-growing region of California has been producing red wine for more than 20 years. Coppola branched out into the world of wine production in the late 1970s, when he and his family took on the Rubicon Estate Winery in Rutherford, California. Their first wine, produced in 1977, saw the Coppola clan stomping the grapes with their bare feet. The vineyard’s most celebrated red wine is the 2000 vintage Rubicon, a heady, densely flavoured red wine with notes of tart cherries, blueberries and violets. Today, operations are rather more professional and Coppola’s vineyards are a major money-spinner.
Dan Aykroyd and Paul Newman have yet to make as much of an impact on the wine world – the former being better known for his film comedies and the latter increasingly more famous for his range of sauces than his film roles – but their red wines have received some good reviews.
In the music world, stars have been lining up to associate themselves with red wine. Veteran British singer Sir Cliff Richard, better known for his clean-living than his associations with the wine world, has been a surprise success, with his Vida Nova winery in the Algarve region of Portugal producing some palatable reds. Sir Cliff recently announced the addition of Onda Vida, a new range of wines made from single grape varieties. The first wine to be released under the Onda Vida label is a red Syrah and promises to be a big seller.
While Sir Cliff, Sting and Mick Hucknall all claim to have at least some level of hands-on contribution to the wines that bear their name, one wine company is unashamedly using mere celebrity image association to hawk its wares. Celebrity Cellars is a wine merchant producing limited edition etched and paper label bottles emblazoned with the name and image associated with mega-stars such as Madonna, The Rolling Stones and Kiss. The officially-endorsed bottles of red wine command some high prices, such as US $72 for a 2004 red Syrah in a collectible Madonna, Confessions on a Dance Floor etched bottle. While the red wines are of reasonable quality, they are likely to be of more interest to music fans and collectors than wine lovers.
Portrait of Gérard Depardieu by Georges Biard.
