The LA mansion, fancy cars and private yacht are all very well, but if you want to live the lifestyle of a top celebrity these days you need something else: wine. And we're not talking about simply filling a cellar with vintage Bordeaux here; we're talking about making your own.
Some stars have been making wine in their spare time for years. Actors Gérard Depardieu and Sam Neill, for example, have been producing their own bottles - in the Rhône Valley and New Zealand's South Island respectively - for some time now. Neill purchased some vineyards in Queenstown, New Zealand, back in 1996, just around the corner from Cocktail director Roger Donaldson's own plot, Donaldson Vineyards. Neill's brand, Two Paddocks, is now well established in the international market.
Also making his mark in the wine trade Down Under is golf ace Greg Norman. Greg has sensibly joined forces with one of Australia's biggest wine companies, Beringer Blass (part of the giant Foster's group), to produce a range of wines under the Greg Norman Estates label, launched in August 1999. The first two wines released were a cool-climate Yarra Valley Chardonnay and a Cabernet Merlot blend from Coonawarra, Australia's top red-wine growing region. US Wine Spectator magazine gave the latter an extremely impressive 91 points out of 100, calling it ``a subtle wine with more intensity and pure Cabernet character than many Australian wines made to sell at two or three times the price''.
The last few years have also seen a number of well-known faces putting their names to a wine brand without being involved in its production. Olivia Newton-John has just released the Olivia series of wines, on the back of the success of her Koala Blue wine label (which features a Shiraz and a Chardonnay from South Australia).
The most high-profile wine launch of last year, however, came out of the Algarve, from the holiday home of none other than Sir Cliff Richard. Those lucky enough to sample the wine before it went on general release were full of praise for the first vintage of Vida Nova, Sir Cliff's above-average Portuguese table wine. Unfortunately you'll have to take their word for it, as the 3,000 bottles secured by British supermarket Tesco sold out within hours, no doubt to crazed fans who were alerted to the release by the singer's official website. Vida Nova is now the fastest-selling product ever on www.tesco.com, knocking the DVD release of The Lord of the Rings into second place. And whether fans will actually decide to drink the stuff, or simply hoard it along with other Cliff memorabilia, is anyone's guess.
Fans of Sting may one day be able to do the same thing, following the news that the former Police frontman has just paid €6 million for 40 hectares of prime Tuscan vineyard. He already owns an estate in the area, but has bought the neighbouring farm, in Chianti Aretini, in order to produce his own wine and olive oil. The bad news is that for the moment the plan is to produce the wine for close friends only. So we'll have to speak to Madonna for some tasting notes on that one, then.
But now to the serious money. In what some might regard as a bit of festive madness, last December Hollywood film director Francis Ford Coppola (above left) handed over a staggering €29m for a prime Cabernet vineyard in California's Napa Valley. The deal included a large house and 84 acres of vineyards planted principally with Cabernet and Merlot grapes. Coppola already owns the Niebaum-Coppola estate winery, and this deal brings his vineyard holdings in the area to about 260 acres. The grapes from the new vineyards will initially go into Niebaum-Coppola's red table wine, Rubicon, which sells for around €100 a bottle and is among Napa's top Cabernet-based wines.
By Katie O'Neill
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