What Meghan Markle’s Napa Valley rosé has in common with Barry Manilow

As with Meghan Markle’s apricot and raspberry spreads, bottles of her special new As Ever rosé sold out in under an hour Wednesday upon their release, even after customers were forced to buy three bottles, retailing for $30 each, to complete the purchase, as the Daily Mail reported. 

In any case, the Duchess of Sussex is officially in the wine business, joining a long line of celebrities who seek to make big bucks by slapping their names to labels of reds, whites or sparkling wines of varying quality and price.

The former TV actor and wife of Prince Harry also is the latest star to sell rosé, a wine that was long looked down upon by wine snobs but that has enjoyed an “upmarket makeover” in recent years, as the Daily Mail also reported. Celebrity associations have apparently helped raise the profile of rosé, including those by Brad Pitt making his well-regarded version in the South of Francie under the Chateau Miraval label.

Meghan’s wine is made in Napa Valley and by a winery that’s known for creating bespoke wines for celebrities, such as a Cabernet Sauvignon and Cuvée Blanc for singer Barry Manilow, a sparkling wine for the estate of movie legend John Wayne and an award-winning Cabernet Sauvignon, called “The Bison,” for the hit Western TV series, “Yellowstone.”

The winery is Fairwinds Estate, located on the Silverado Trail outside Calistoga. Fairwinds also creates brands for organizations and universities, including schools in the south like The Citadel, Appalachian State University and the University of Houston. Regarding the Obbligato Napa Valley wine that Fairwinds makes for Manilow, the singer said he donates proceeds to his Manilow Music Project, which provides instruments, equipment and scholarships in order to “empower underfunded school music programs to provide quality music education.”

Sources told the Daily Mail that Meghan decided to partner with Fairwinds because it suffered extensive damage in the 2020 Glass Fire. “She wanted to lean in and help a California business rebuild,” the source said. Fortunately, Fairwinds also said on its website that its wine inventory and production were protected in its underground wine caves.

Megan has said that her As Ever rosé is “infused with joy and whimsy.” The label offers some other other limited details, including that it’s a Napa Valley wine. By law, that means that at least 75% of the grapes come from the region. The label also identifies a vintage — 2023 — which means that the grapes were harvested that year. In reports, locals have said 2023 was a very good year, perhaps  “one of the finest in decades.”

No doubt, Meghan’s critics and even some serious oenophiles will soon have their say about her foray into the wine industry, once the bottles land in the hands of customers.

Meanwhile, Meghan can hope that there won’t be embarrassing delivery problems, as there have been with recent shipments of her $14 apricot spread, as the New York Post reported. This week, she was forced to issue refunds to customers after a website stock error left customers notified that from the company that it was unable to fill their orders.

“Just received an email from As Ever, they are unable to fulfill my apricot order but will give me a full refund and a free replacement when it becomes available again,” one customer wrote on X, the New York Post reported.

Meghan experienced a similar “blunder” several weeks ago with orders of her $28 jars of honey, the New York Post reported. Puck also reported that that this “haphazard” rollout of As Ever products was simply “the Sussex way.” And while Meghan and her fans have claimed that her products have been so popular that they’ve quickly sold out,  Puck writer Rachel Strugatz said that creating a product “scarcity” was always part of the plan; Meghan wanted everything to sell out within a day “to create the illusion of demand.”

But if the duchess can better organize her wine inventory, she stands to make a lot of money, as do other celebrities who have joined the lucrative celebrity alcohol branding trend, as the Daily Mail said. Pitt’s Miraval rosé brand, which he formerly co-owned with ex-wife Angelina Jolie, is valued at around $500 million, according to Page Six. Meanwhile, George Clooney sold his Casamigos tequila company for $1 billion in 2017. 

While Meghan probably wasn’t in the Napa Valley in 2023 helping with the harvest, she did spent a fair amount of time doing a lot of tasting of different blends created by Fairwinds before deciding on a final version, a source told the Daily Mail.

“Every time she had friends over she would test the different blends out on them and then give notes back to the expert winemaker that it needed more of this, or less of that,” the source said. “This is a custom-made wine.”