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Cameron Diaz just came out with a wine. It is, in her words, a “clean” wine. That is, no chemicals are used (suppos
edly) in the making of this product. Just grapes, and yeast, and love and unicorns and rainbows. And the minute she used the word “clean” in her marketing, the wine industry went ballistic. No glitzy Hollywood actress will tell us what clean wine is! How dare she market her product in such a heinous way!
This comes from an industry that routinely called jug wines “California Chablis” 50 years ago, not to mention California Burgundy, California Champagne, and the list goes on.
And this comes from an industry that seems to thrive off the notion of the mystique behind a label, behind a production method, behind a wine.
Oh, our methods are proprietary, we don’t like to tell people where our grapes come from, we have an NDA with this vineyard but TRUST US, it’s a fancy one (that is almost a direct quote from a sales meeting this writer took part in). And then, on the opposite side of the coin, you have the natural wine snobs cracking their knuckles and warming up their keyboards to release their latest threats and diatribes about how THEIRS IS THE ONLY CLEAN WINE, and how DARE Cameron Diaz not talk more about terroir and native yeasts and no fining or filtering in her marketing, as if she even knew what natural wine was.
The point of all this nonsensical anger? There is no point.
The wine industry will be up in arms about it for a few weeks, injurious articles will be written, blog posts will be hoisted on high, and maybe even a YouTube video or two might mention it. And guess what will happen to Cameron Diaz’ wine? It’ll probably sell like crazy. It is Cameron Diaz, after all, and I’m sure that many, many distributors, retailers, and restaurants would love to be able to sell a wine label owned by an actress. Just look at Brangelina’s Chateau Miraval.
The ability to point to a wine and say “such and such owns this” and have the customer immediately recognize who they are is a powerful, powerful tool in sales, one that will not be ignored just because there’s a little controversy over what, exactly, the wine is.
What all these wine industry pundits fail to recognize, time and time again, is that the person buying the wine isn’t reading Washington Post articles about it before they buy it. They might not be reading anything. They MIGHT Vivino it beforehand, and guess what? Both these new wines have above a 3.6 rating on Vivino. Most people who are searching for wine stroll down a grocery or liquor store aisle and look for a new wine, a pretty label, an interesting sounding name, whatever, and they’ll stumble on this and not think twice about it being a “clean wine.” And the wheels will keep on churning.
The point of this article? Drink the wine you want, when you want it. They’re all just fermented grape juice with or without some extra ingredients, and in the end it all turns into piss anyway.
