Vine performance: Hollywood stars are snapping up Europe's finest vineyards

Who wouldn’t want to sip from Sting’s cup, clink with Cliff Richard or go boozing with Brangelina? Lucy Hunter Johnston raises a glass to the celebrity vintners putting their stamp on the wine world

GLASS ACT

Drew Barrymore

Drew Barrymore may not yet have won an Oscar but her oenophilic talents have not gone unrewarded. Last year her Barrymore Wines 2011 Pinot Grigio was awarded the prestigious gold medal at Le Challenge International du Vin, France’s largest international wine competition. She started the imaginatively named label ‘in honour of my family’, inspired by her travels through Italy. The grapes for the ‘fresh apricot and lively citrus-flavoured’ wine are grown in the north-east of Italy in Triveneto, just below the Alps. Although it’s not clear quite how much involvement Drew has in the actual making of the wine, she sure knows how to drink it, downing several glasses in one after losing ‘wine-pong’ to Chelsea Handler on her TV show.

She says ‘I’ve always loved wine. I mean, it’s wine.’

WINE PAIRING

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie

Proof that being in a celebrity couple helps to shift serious amounts of plonk: Brangelina’s first foray into wine-making (6,000 bottles) sold out in five hours in March this year. They bought the Château Miraval (where they are rumoured to be getting married later this summer) for about £35 million in 2008, but waited until this year to release their first harvest from their 150 acres of vines, the 2012 Miraval Côtes de Provence Rosé. As well as the vineyard, their pad rocks a recording studio (where Sting, the Cranberries and Pink Floyd have all jammed), an ancient aqueduct and a moat. Wine critics have dismissed their choice of rosé as ‘a little bit obvious but very, very, very pretty’, which sounds about right.

They say ‘We are intimately involved and quite enthused over the wine project.’

ENGLISHMAN IN TUSCANY

Sting

The great sadness of Sting’s move into wine-making is that he decided against calling his vineyard Message in a Bottle and instead stuck with the more classic Il Palagio, after his 900-acre organic Tuscan estate, which has been farming since the 15th century. But don’t lose heart — the first biodynamic wine he produced after he and wife Trudie took over in 1999 was Sister Moon, a Cabernet-Merlot-Sangiovese blend named after his 1987 song. But while the singer doesn’t enjoy picking the grapes himself (‘That’s hard labour, man’), he does serenade the vines. ‘And you know, if I play it true, the wine is better.’

He says ‘I haven’t given up music to take up wine-making unless there’s millions of dollars involved. Probably not. We bought this property because we love it.’

SUMMER HOLIDAY JOB

Cliff Richard

According to Adega do Cantor, the winery that produces Sir Cliff Richard’s Vida Nova wine, grown on his sprawling Algarve estate, the singer is ‘often seen getting his hands dirty in the vineyard or his feet dirty in the winery’. If the image of the 72-year-old stomping around in barrels of grapes is enough to put you off your tipple, then the news that his wines have won numerous awards — including gold at the Berlin Wine Trophy for the Vida Nova Tinto 2010 and silver at the Mundus Vini 2012 for the Vida Nova Rosé 2012 — could tempt you back.

He says ‘That’s rubbish. I wouldn’t pay for that, it’s tainted, it’s insipid. It tastes like vinaigrette. I’d never buy that,’ after trying his own wine in a blind tasting on Gordon Ramsay’s The F Word.

FRUITY SPANISH

Antonio Banderas

When most people get a bit pissed on a night out the worst that happens is that they drunk-dial an ex, but Antonio Banderas ended up buying a vineyard. He met the Ortega brothers in a club in Malaga in 2009 and ended up buying a 50 per cent stake in their 580-acre Anta winery in the Ribera del Duero region. So far his input has included signing a wall of the barrel room on his 2009 visit, and signing bottles of Anta Banderas a10 in a Miami wine shop in 2011.

He says ‘I have a passion for growing grapes and making wine. It is hard to explain in words but I can say this — it is a feeling that I have in my heart.’

THE GRAPEFATHER

Francis Ford Coppola

Director Francis Ford Coppola is indisputably the Don of celebrity vintners, having bought 1,560 acres of Napa Valley’s Inglenook estate with proceeds from the first Godfather film in 1975. He originally planned to use only a couple of acres for production (the first harvest in 1977 yielded just four barrels of the estate’s Bordeaux-style Rubicon, which the family trampled together barefoot), but bought the rest of the estate in 1996, as well as Château Souverain in Sonoma in 2006 (now called the Francis Ford Coppola Winery), and the trademark to the Inglenook name in 2011. Inglenook Chablis is now one of the five most widely sold wines in US restaurants, and Sofia & co still host a harvest party every year, where neighbours and friends trample the grapes.

He says ‘Wine-making and film-making are two great art forms. They both start with

raw ingredients — the land and the grapes,

or the script and the actor’s performance. The winemaker takes these raw materials, ferments, blends and creates.’ ES

Other celebrity boozers

George Clooney

We thought George Clooney couldn’t get any sexier, then he started making his own tequila, Casamigos, with his friend (and Mr Cindy Crawford) Rande Gerber. ‘We love tequila — on the rocks, by the shot, and at times straight from the bottle,’ he says

Elbow

Ramsbottom alt-rockers Elbow might seem unlikely brewers but they launched their own ale in 2011, and named it Build a Rocket Boys! after their album of the same name

P Diddy

‘I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t want to do just endorsements.I want ownership’ —and what Diddy wants, Diddy gets. The rapper was appointed brand ambassador for Ciroc vodka, and in turn he gets a 50 per cent share of its yearly profits

Iron Maiden

Another inventively named beer comes from heavy metal rockers Iron Maiden, who called their ale Trooper, after their 1983 song. The label features a skull-faced zombie soldier

Hanson

To celebrate their 21st anniversary together (yes, really, 21 years. The mind boggles) those bouncy Hanson brothers have created Mmmhops beer, which will be released this autumn along with their sixth (sixth!) album of fizzy pop

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