The Rich, They’re Different From Me and You
Supermodel Kate Moss has bought a French winery for her boytoy, guitarist Jamie Hince. She bought the winery after consulting with former boytoy Johnny Depp.
“Johnny was incredibly encouraging and told Kate that producing wine has been an amazingly rewarding hobby.”
Rich dilettantes are, of course, one of the reasons its so hard to make money in the wine business. They’re cluttering-up the market with vanity wines and don’t particularly care if they ever make money. And then there’s this:
The catwalk beauty was inspired to buy the grape-growing fields after visiting the South of France and trying out the region’s various wines, and she now plans to name one of the bottles after herself.
Which will guarantee that the wine will sell regardless of its merit, because consumers are every bit as stupid as marketers believe us to be, which is pretty stupid.
But, of course, Moss is in this for the joy of creation.
September 7th, 2011 at 8:56 AM
Jordan/oil, Silver Oak/construction, Folie a Deux/psychiatry.
Just a few examples of money behind wineries. The list is filled with dentists, MDs, hockey stars, real estate magnates, film directors, giant insurance companies, and multinational corporations. Any schmo with money and an ego or any corporation seeing a perceived price/value opportunity can get into the game.
Of the many entities that produce wine, I’m glad when someone starts doing it because they actually enjoy wine. Best wishes, Kate.
September 7th, 2011 at 9:16 AM
Huh. I’m not sure Kate, Jamie, or my good pal Johnny, for that matter, are all that different. Not from me, anyway.
As much as I love Johnny, I’ve gone a slightly different route, instead choosing to seek my counsel in the knowledgeable, humble, and dear chap, Jay McInerney. We labor over the joy of creation on frequent hops across the pond (his G12 has a kicking cellar of magnums just behind the cockpit). Jay-Jay is a viticulture and marketing genius! Instead of the south of France, we’re eyeing a swath of valley floor in the shadow of the Pyrenees where we’ll plant Norton grafted onto Binova rootstock and bottle it under my pet llama’s label, ‘Zha Zha’.
September 7th, 2011 at 11:52 AM
Good stuff, Steve. And your journey with J proves that “a rolling stone don’t gather no Moss.”
September 7th, 2011 at 2:26 PM
Steve, you don’t have to graft Norton. Even Kate knows that.
September 7th, 2011 at 3:26 PM
My good man, Jeff…Yes, Kate did tell me that tid bit about norton over a few lines of belicose H on Jay’s G. But I figured that if it needn’t be done, then I’d probably be the first. And how can you put a price tag on that?
Cheerio. Off the get the yacht washed.
September 9th, 2011 at 1:40 PM
Somebody get Steve a cravat.