Celebrities Who Own Wineries — Drew Barrymore
Of all the celebrities in this series, Drew Barrymore might be the most honest one.
Sting spent years perfecting biodynamic farming before anyone was allowed near his Tuscan estate. Jay-Z turned his wine brand into a calculated, nine-figure business move. Andrea Bocelli was literally born into 200 years of winemaking tradition and probably came out of the womb knowing the difference between a Sangiovese and a Nebbiolo.
Drew Barrymore looked at a bottle of Pinot Grigio, said “I love this,” and decided that was enough of a reason to start a wine company.
And then — in a Vogue interview that wine writers still bring up at dinner parties — she explained to the world that rosé gets its pink colour from grapes being peeled.
Grapes. Being peeled. One by one.
I don’t say this to be unkind. I say this because it is the single most relatable thing any celebrity has ever done in the wine industry. And honestly? It makes me trust her more, not less.
It Started in Italy — Of Course It Did
Here’s the part of the Drew Barrymore wine story that almost nobody talks about — and the part that made me want to write this post the moment I found out.
When Drew launched her wine brand in 2011, her very first bottle wasn’t from California. It wasn’t from France. It wasn’t from anywhere particularly glamorous or expected.
It was a Pinot Grigio from northern Italy — specifically an IGT Delle Venezie, made from grapes grown in the Veneto and Friuli regions of northeastern Italy.
That Veneto. The Prosecco hills. The corner of Italy I write about constantly, the region that started my own love affair with Italian wine when I moved here years ago.
Drew’s reasoning was beautifully straightforward. “Pinot Grigio has always been a love of mine,” she said. “If I go to a restaurant, it’s a safe, surefire bet and I love it.”
Not the most poetic origin story ever told. But it’s honest. And honest, in my experience, always ages better than poetic.
The bottle itself was gorgeous though — the label featured the actual Barrymore family crest, the real crest of her grandfather, legendary Hollywood actor John Barrymore, reimagined by iconic artist Shepard Fairey. So while Drew may not have had all the winemaking facts straight, she absolutely knew how to make something worth picking up off the shelf.
The California Chapter — Hotel Lobbies, Pipets, and a Winemaker With Infinite Patience
By 2013, the brand had grown into something more substantial. Drew partnered with Jackson Family Wines and their winemaker Kris Kato at Carmel Road in Monterey County, and together they built out a range that actually reflected how Drew drinks — accessible, flavour-forward, and completely unpretentious.
The wines they made together:
Barrymore Pinot Grigio — light, bright, honeydew and Asian pear. The kind of wine you open intending to have one glass and somehow finish while cooking dinner, which I consider the highest possible compliment for a white wine.
Barrymore Rosé of Pinot Noir — pale pink, dry, peach and apricot with a citrus edge. Drew described it as “incredibly peachy and really dry, but with lots of apricot and a beautiful colour.” Which, considering what she said about rosé on Vogue, is a surprisingly accurate tasting note. Growth.
Drew’s Blend Pinot Noir — cherries, rhubarb, a little spice, dry and elegant. The most personal wine in the range, developed through what is possibly the most chaotic winemaking process in California history: Drew and Kris Kato would meet in hotel lobbies across the country, set up graduated cylinders and pipets on whatever surface was available, and blend samples on hotel notepaper until something clicked.
She wasn’t involved in a celebrity-lends-her-name-to-a-bottle way. She was involved in a texts-her-winemaker-photos-of-Italian-wines-she-finds-in-restaurants kind of way. Genuinely, deeply, sometimes inconveniently involved.
“I don’t think you want me anywhere near the nature process,” she said cheerfully. “I like, kill every plant I touch. But I’m very good at tasting.”
Honestly? The ideal arrangement. Let the expert grow the grapes. Let Drew decide what tastes good. Between the two of them, they seem to have figured it out.
The Vogue Incident — We Have to Talk About It
In 2015, Vogue released a short video of Drew Barrymore explaining rosé.
It did not go entirely to plan.
Among the things Drew told the world in this video:
Rosé gets its pink colour from grapes being peeled. (They are not peeled. They have never been peeled. Nobody in the history of winemaking has sat down and individually peeled 600 grapes per bottle. The colour comes from skin contact — red grape skins left briefly in the juice before being pressed off.)
Cold fermentation is what makes a wine rosé. (It does not. Cold fermentation is used in lots of wine styles. It affects freshness and aroma. It has nothing to do with colour.)
A darker pink rosé means more sugar. (It does not. Colour and sweetness have no relationship to each other whatsoever. A pale rosé can be sweeter than a deep pink one.)
Wine publications were delighted. Articles were published. Corrections were gleefully issued. The wine internet, which has strong opinions and is never shy about sharing them, was extremely enthusiastic about sharing them.
And you know what Drew Barrymore did?
Kept going. Kept making wine. Kept talking about it with exactly the same enthusiasm she had before anyone corrected her on anything.
The rest of us have said wrong things about wine in front of people we wanted to impress. We just didn’t do it on camera for Vogue with a global distribution deal on the line. The scale is different. The essential human experience of confidently saying something wrong about wine? Universal.
Somewhere in Monterey, Kris Kato presumably read the articles, took a long breath, and sent a very patient email.
I think about that email a lot.
The Woman Behind the Bottle
What comes through in every single interview Drew has given about wine — and there have been many — is that this was never about building an empire or making a smart business pivot.
It was about the table.
“Family is whomever you sit down with at the table and have a really lovely moment with,” she said in one interview. “That’s something to really appreciate and realise that it is a blessing and a moment you need to put in your memory banks as something very near and dear to you.”
Drew has spoken openly over the years about her unconventional childhood — emancipated from her parents at thirteen, navigating Hollywood fame before most teenagers finish school, building her sense of family from the people around her rather than the one she was born into. Which makes her obsession with the table make complete sense. Wine, for her, isn’t about prestige, investment, or having the right answer when someone asks about skin contact.
It’s about who’s sitting across from you. And whether there’s enough of whatever’s in the glass to last the whole conversation.
That’s a philosophy this blog was built on. And it’s why, of all the celebrities we’ve covered in this series, Drew Barrymore’s wine story might be the one that resonates most.
Where Things Stand Now
Barrymore Wines continues — still made with the Carmel Road team, still priced between $20-$30, still genuinely good. Drew’s involvement hasn’t faded with time. She still travels, still tastes, still sends Kris texts from wherever she happens to be when she finds something worth paying attention to.
The brand doesn’t have Jay-Z’s cultural thunder or Bocelli’s generational legacy. It doesn’t have the drama of Brad and Angelina’s ongoing $164 million courtroom situation. What it has is something quieter and, I’d argue, more lasting — a genuine sense of joy in the whole enterprise, and a founder who has never once pretended to be something she isn’t.
Even when Vogue was watching.
One Last Thing
Drew Barrymore doesn’t know exactly how rosé gets its colour.
She knows exactly what to do with a glass of it.
And in the end — at the table, on a Sunday, with the right people around you — that turns out to be the only thing that actually matters.
Enjoying the celebrity winery series? You’ll want to read about Jay-Z’s $600 million Champagne empire, Andrea Bocelli’s 200-year-old Tuscan winery, and the ongoing courtroom saga at Brad and Angelina’s Château Miraval. Subscribe to the newsletter and never miss who’s next.
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