Celebrities Who Own Wineries: Yao Ming’s Unexpectedly Serious Wine Empire

Picture a Napa tasting room. Low light, hushed voices, someone murmuring about tannin structure.

Now picture a 7’6″ former NBA All-Star ducking through the doorway to join them, and try not to smile.

That’s the first reaction most people have walking into Yao Family Wines in St Helena. It looks, on paper, like exactly the kind of celebrity vanity project this series has covered before. A famous name, a photogenic label, a wine most people assume he’s never actually tasted himself. I went in expecting the same story. What I found instead was one of the more critically respected Cabernet producers in the valley, run by a man who genuinely earned that respect the slow, unglamorous way.

It started, of all places, at a Texas steakhouse.

A steakhouse, not a marketing meeting

Yao Ming played center for the Houston Rockets from 2002 to 2011, and Houston, it turns out, is serious steak country. His teammate Dikembe Mutombo, another towering, beloved NBA legend, introduced him to the pairing of a great steak with a serious glass of red. Yao got hooked specifically on Napa Cabernet, not the French wine that was (and still is) the more fashionable choice back home in China.

He’s been fairly plain about it in interviews since, telling Wine Spectator that Napa wines were simply what he fell for during his years living in the US. It’s a refreshingly unglamorous origin story for a business that now produces some of the more sought-after Cabernet in the valley: not a branding exercise dreamed up by an agent, just a very tall man who liked what was in his glass at dinner.

He started this while he was still playing

Here’s the detail that actually surprised me. Yao founded Yao Family Wines in 2008, three full years before he retired from the NBA. He partnered with Tom Hinde, a respected winemaker formerly of Flowers Vineyard, after being introduced through his own sports manager. The first vintage launched in China in November 2011, timed almost exactly with his retirement announcement.

So for one entire NBA season, Yao Ming was simultaneously an active All-Star center and, quietly, a Napa Valley vintner in training. Most athletes wait until retirement to figure out their second act. He was already several vintages deep before he hung up his jersey.

No vineyard, and that’s actually the smarter move

Unlike most of the celebrity names in this series, Yao doesn’t own the land his grapes grow on. Hinde instead sources fruit from six different vineyard sites scattered across Napa’s sub appellations, Rutherford, Oakville, Howell Mountain among them, each contributing its own character to the final blend. Think of it less like owning one plot of land and working with whatever it gives you every year, and more like a spice cabinet approach, pulling the best elements from several sources rather than being stuck with one.

It’s a more flexible model than the single estate story most celebrity wineries lead with. It’s also, frankly, a more craft focused one.

The part where skepticism usually dies

This is the moment that actually settles the argument, one way or the other, for most people walking through the door with lowered expectations.

Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate reviewed the wines directly against the usual suspicion around celebrity labels, and concluded the Reserve bottling ranks alongside just about anything else being made in Napa. That’s not a soft compliment handed out because a famous name asked nicely. Wine Spectator and Decanter China have both covered the winery as a serious operation worth writing about on its own merits, not as a novelty item.

For a brand this young, that level of critical respect is genuinely rare.

He crowdfunded his own tasting room

Somewhere in the middle of all that critical acclaim sits a small, funny detail that undercuts the whole “famous person throws money around” assumption almost everyone starts with.

When the St Helena tasting room opened in 2016, roughly $2 million of the funding came through CrowdFunder. A man with a nine figure NBA career, quietly asking the public to help pay for his tasting room. It’s the kind of detail that doesn’t fit the story people expect before they actually look into it.

Built for a different audience than the rest of Napa

Most Napa producers chase the domestic US market first and everyone else second. Yao Family Wines flipped that from day one, launching in China before it properly launched in the US, and by 2015 it had become the best selling premium California wine brand by value there. Yao still flies in from Shanghai for the key winemaking decisions each year, and the branding leans into Chinese culture deliberately, right down to releases timed around Lunar New Year.

The clearest example of that is a wine called The Chop: a single barrel Rutherford Cabernet released alongside an NFT, its label carrying nothing but Yao’s personal Chinese family seal. Only eleven bottles of the special edition exist, matching his old jersey number and the year of his very first vintage. It’s a strange, hyper specific detail, and it tells you a lot about a winery that was never really trying to fit the traditional Napa mould in the first place.

So does the skepticism survive?

Not really, and that’s the whole point of telling this story properly instead of just listing facts about it.

Strip away the height jokes and the novelty of a basketball legend standing in a wine cellar, and what’s left is a small, well reviewed Napa Cabernet producer that built its business around a market most American wineries still barely think about, working with some of the valley’s best vineyard sites, earning real praise from critics who owe him nothing. Walk in expecting a punchline. Walk out revising your opinion of what a celebrity wine label is actually capable of.

The tallest man in the tasting room turned out to be running one of the more serious wine projects in this entire series.

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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FAQ

Does Yao Ming actually own a winery? Yes. Yao Ming founded Yao Family Wines in 2008, producing Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. He doesn’t own the vineyard land itself; grapes are sourced from several respected vineyard sites across Napa’s sub-appellations.

Is Yao Ming’s wine critically acclaimed? Yes. Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate has praised the wines directly, and outlets including Wine Spectator and Decanter China have covered the brand as a serious, well-regarded Napa producer rather than a celebrity novelty label.

What market does Yao Family Wines focus on? Primarily China. The brand launched there before fully launching in the US, and by 2015 had become the best-selling premium California wine brand by value in the Chinese market.

What is “The Chop” wine? A limited-edition single-barrel Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon released with an accompanying NFT, labeled with Yao Ming’s personal Chinese family seal. Only eleven bottles of the special edition were produced.