They may all excel in their own area of celebrity, whether it be singing, acting or playing football, but can they make a decent bottle of wine?! You are more likely to see Sting up on stage singing then trellising the vines but a few years ago he paid €6m for a Tuscan vineyard which has produced around 30,000 bottles of wine to be sold in the UK and USA. Although a name has not yet been chosen the wine, a 2007 vintage which is based on the Sangiovese grape, with a touch of Cabernet and Merlot, is sure to be a hit like the singer.
Cliff Richard is another singing sensation who has gone on the bottle. After planting eight hectares of Shiraz, Aragonez and Trincadeira on his property in the Algarve in the south of Portugal, in 1998 and was aged in used one-year-old oak casks. This produced the wine called: Vida Nova, meaning new life. And it was a definite hit with customers in supermarkets such as Tesco and Waitrose.
French actor Gerard Depardieu also owns vineyards and is very passionate about the wine trade, and is quoted as saying “‘There are many wines at the same price that are bullshit industrial wines,’ he said. ‘[Mine] is complete honest wine. It’s not a question of marketing’” Decanter Magazine, Depardieu: Biodynamics ‘doesn’t exist’. December 1, 2008.
However enthusiastic you may be about wine and however good you are at your chosen profession this does not guarantee a decent bottle of wine will be sat on a supermarket shelf one day. Cliff Richard is famed as saying, “That’s rubbish. I wouldn’t pay for that, it’s tainted, it’s insipid. It tastes like vinaigrette. I’d never buy that.” on Gordon Ramsey’s the F word so does this mean that maybe Cliff should have stayed in the pop industry? Sales of the wines show that this is not the case.
Overall, blind tasting is probably the best way to decide whether the wines are worthy of being drunk or whether the idea of being the best producer should have stayed at just a dream. Prejudices will always come into play, no matter how level headed you think you are. So I would say, don’t judge a bottle by its label, judge it by its content.
