Celebrity Wines

I was away yesterday attending to family business, so this link is already a day old. Imagine my surprise when I began my morning news and blog rounds only to find that the subject of my most recent post, Niebaum Coppola, has merited the attention of Slate's wine critic, Mike Steinberger.

Mike takes a look at a number of celebrity vintners and shows a fondness for Coppola's 2002 Cabernet Franc, but is less pleased with the pricey 2001 Rubicon. And stay away from any wine with Elvis in the name... but I think you knew that.

He gives a fair bit of credit to Coppola for starting the celebrity wine trend,

Without question, the dean of celebrity winemakers is Francis Ford Coppola, though "celebrity winemaker" is the last label he'd ever want and the last one that should ever be applied to him. A wine buff from his childhood days on Long Island, Coppola jumped into the wine business in 1975, using his earnings from the first Godfather to purchase most of Napa Valley's legendary Inglenook estate. He has been one of the seminal figures in the valley's rise to international acclaim, and though the Niebaum-Coppola wines have been overshadowed in recent years by all the hoopla surrounding the so-called "cult cabernets," they still command a dedicated following.

He fails to mention one of the celebrity wineries that also has entertained a good reputation came along only 2 years later in 1977, is the Smothers winery, now called Remick Ridge in Sonoma.

Read the whole thing here.

Category: Wine