Celebrity Wine Tasting: The Vintners of Sex and the City

We couldn't help but wonder... are they any good?

At last the time has come to, as Pink would say, raise your glass: We’ve written 50 issues of Drinks With Broads without delivering on the “drinks” part of this relationship, and that changes TODAY. Sort of. While we still don’t have a table with Christine Baranski and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tracee Ellis Ross (etc.) reserved for a liquid lunch, we did decide it was high time to treat ourselves to some bevvies. For those here who are not doing alcohol right now, or ever, we sampled a non-alc brand called ISH; for folks indulging in the sauce, we took a wild journey into the world of celeb-made or celeb-embraced wine brands out there. Do they know what they are doing? Do we? Read on.

First, you should know that celeb-branded wines are not as numerous as they once were. Ferguson Crest, the majestic-sounding joint-enterprise between Fergie the Pea and her father, seems to have shuttered¹. The dudes from Train no longer appear to make their wines named after their songs, so sadly, we cannot quaff any Drops of Jupiter.² Likewise, we could not find any Barrymore Wines, nor a working website for Kate Hudson’s joint vintage with Matthew Bellamy — maybe their amicable parting did not include a custody arrangement for the grapes? — and tragically, it also appears Tituss Burgess’s Pinot Noir, based on the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt scene, is no more.

But! We still have a robust (literal) spreadsheet of options — John Legend makes a lot of rosé?!? — and in honor of And Just Like That… premiering tonight, we decided to get started with wines from people who have appeared on Sex and the City. (PSA: Our And Just Like That…. recaps will be beamed to paid subscribers’ inboxes starting Monday.) Our methodology was complex: We got together with our respective partners, drank a bunch of wine, and then said some stuff about it. We did bow to wine-tasting custom and tasted light-to-dark, meaning we started with our lone white, did the rosés in order of depth of hue, and finished with our red blend. Otherwise, if you are hoping for a wine knowledge epiphany, like in French Kiss when Meg Ryan smells Kevin Kline’s box of vineyard goodies — not a euphemism — and then immediately tastes them all in the wine, you’re going to be disappointed.

Celeb: Sarah Jessica Parker

Sex and the City character: Wacky clothing enthusiast/show protagonist Carrie Bradshaw.

Wine brand: Invivo X, SJP. Yes, we thought it was Invivo x SJP, like most collabs, until we really looked and realized it’s written and punctuated this way. For… reasons?!? We fear it’s probably intended to be “X” as in, she’s blowing us a kiss. Anyway, right now it offers two kinds: a sauvignon blanc, and a rosé.

Discernible level of celeb involvement: Moderate to high. Invivo is a New Zealand-based winery that doesn’t appear to distribute much in the U.S.; it has a decade-long collaboration with Graham Norton and a line of Unity wines, but we’d never know it here. This makes the SJP collaboration its apparent entrée into the American market. SJP mentions it occasionally on her Instagram, and on the website, she wrote, “Each of the base wines had great personalities so combining them to create something special took some work at the blending table.” Was she AT said blending table? Apparently! There are videos for each of the four sauvignon blanc vintages that claim to be from final blending sessions³, and she’s present either in body or on Zoom. This IS the woman who works at her own shoe store, so it’s not far-fetched that she’d take a personal interest.

Website: But WHY does she have a personal interest in the first place? Don’t look to the website; it won’t tell you. It’s mostly pictures of the dudes who run Invivo, and a few shots of SJP looking adorable near a bottle of wine, or cradling a glass. It also does not explain their grammar decisions. But we DO need to discuss that the Invivo guys, separate from SJP, launched this:

“[T]he world’s first winery airline saw guests board the Invivo Air Saab 340 plane named ‘Cloud Wine’, enjoying a guided wine-tasting at altitude. […] The plane’s aesthetic replicated a vineyard look and feel complete with hanging vines and guests even received a welcome pack on board featuring Invivo’s ‘Cloud Wine’ in-flight magazine, a sun hat and sun scream [sic], local Kiwi snacks courtesy of Griffins and an essano face spritz to fresh up on arrival.”

They then spent a weekend tasting wines, and that sounded nice, but this “winery airline” is full nonsense. If an in-flight magazine and snacks constitutes a welcome pack, then EVERY airline offers this. I also want to scream at “sun scream,” and at whomever thought that “vineyard look and feel” meant taping a bunch of plastic ivy to the overhead compartments. Honestly, SJP would NEVER.

Bottle aesthetics: It’s just a large paint X, in either blue or silver, and otherwise a clean all-caps situation, with no serifs⁴ EXCEPT on the initials “SJP.”

X marks the spot… which this wine doesn’t hit.

First up: Sauvignon Blanc, $20, as seen above. This one has gotten decent accolades and came with a gold “90” sticker on the bottle, though it wasn’t immediately clear from whom that 90 came. Wine Spectator gave it a 92.

Tasting Notes, verbatim: “Aromas of lifted, ripe tropical fruit amongst a mingling of citrus peel with exotic guava in the background. The delicate oak influence underpins the fruit on the nose and in the palate gives an immediate softness and accessibility. This swiftly fills the mouth and the balanced acid structure emerges through the folds of supple savory and fruit sweet characters. The finish is long and, delicious.”

Our notes: We all recoiled a bit on the aroma, so the first review out of all of us was, “It tastes better than it smells.” We found a comment on a wine website that described this as having an “unbalanced acid spine,” and that is basically a polite way of saying, “Ew,” and also probably a phrase you could use to describe both of us as people. Everyone agreed that the harsh finish kind of wiped out any neutral-to-positive feelings we had initially, and we made a variety of unpleasant faces. Jim called it “Hint O’ Sweat” and Kevin said, “It tastes like the Sex and the City episode where Charlotte hooks up with her personal trainer,” which he then admitted he made up. Oftentimes at restaurants, even if you don’t love a wine, by the time you’re done with a glass you might just reorder it anyway because that’s where you are now. None of us would reorder this.

Next up: 2019 Rosé, $24, but we mail-ordered the last bottle from Bevmo for $14. Wine.com may have some in stock, but in general SJP’s rosé seems to be harder to find; conversely, the sauv blanc was in our local store. SJP herself posted a photo of her “first of the summer” on the day ours arrived, and it looks like her vintage is also 2019. So maybe they don’t make it anymore?

Tasting Notes: “The nose is lifted and expressive with perfumed aromas of pink florals, red berries, subtle herbs and minerals. The palate is fresh, vibrant and fruitful with savoury notes delivering a fine, even, long finish of strawberries, rosé petals and fresh herbs.”

Our notes: Friends, this was the third rosé and fourth wine overall that we tasted, so our notes are really sparse and do not include any of the above words. We literally wrote, “Smell… eh?” From what we recall, this was a compliment — none of the four of us particularly likes rosé, but we found this one quite drinkable, with no distracting punch to the nostrils. When prodded, Kevin said this reminded him of the SATC episode where Samantha shaves her pubic hair into a lightning bolt, which he then admitted was the only plot he could remember — and it turns out that is also the episode where Samantha hooks up with her personal yoga trainer, so ergo maybe the only episode he’s ever seen?

Overall thoughts: It’s a real shame the sauvignon blanc is the SJP wine you can easily procure — but then again, maybe that’s because people aren’t buying it? We all agreed this was our favorite rosé of the evening.

Celeb: Kyle MacLachlan

Sex and the City character: Charlotte’s temporarily impotent, kilt-loving ex, Trey.

Wine brand: pursued by bear, sans capital letters, which Kyle explains on the labels is based on the iconic Shakespeare stage direction from A Winter’s Tale.

Discernible level of celeb involvement: Very high, as you will glean from the next section, which we cannot BEAR, pun intended, to withhold from you any longer.