Hear, hear.
The trend of celebrity wine continues.
Sting and his actress-director wife Trudie Styler who cover Wine Spectator’s April issue, have become respected members of Tuscany’s deeply-rooted wine community.
Hitting stands March 15, the power couple talk celebrity wines, music and winemaking, and their journey to transform an idyllic home into a thriving winemaking business.
Here’s some:
On celebrity wines: “I think in some ways it’s a pejorative: celebrity wine. Because there is so much of it. We haven’t been here for generations. But we are serious. We are committed.”
On paying $3.5 million for the 16th-century villa: “We bought it for a song. Maybe two songs.”
On using the farm as an escape: “We were looking for a refuge, and the fact that it was a working farm attracted us as well. But we didn’t really think of it as a commercial thing at all. It was the aesthetic of having a working farm around us.
On music and winemaking: “Even though it was going to cost a lot of money, the ethos of creating something unique really spoke to us. For me, the analogy of music was strong because success in music is about sounding unique…Taste to me is a wavelength. It’s like listening to Gustave Mahler or Burt Bacharach. It’s all good, but there’s a spectrum of intensity.”
On how wine relaxes him: “I have so much adrenaline going through my system after being on stage. I find a glass of red wine brings me back to earth and I find my rhythm.”
On what clinched the purchase: “The house was kind of falling down, but the rooms were livable. We knew it needed a lot of work. But the clincher for me was the wine. The duke said to me, ‘Would you like to taste some of the wine?’ I said, ‘Sure,’ and tasted it, and wow. I said, ‘Okay, we’ll buy it.’”
On their stake in the Italian economy: “I prefer Italian wine now. It may just be loyalty to my people since we bought Il Palagio. I feel we have a stake in the Italian economy.”
On green harvesting, which led to winning over their neighbors: “Throwing grapes on the ground did not sit well with the locals. Only when they tasted the wine did they understand.”
On the estate (where he’s recorded songs for five albums) and drinking wine daily: “For me it’s a place to think, to get inspired, to bring people. Wine is part of the cross-pollination of ideas…I can drink wine every day. Wine actually makes me more of who I am.”
Trudie, on bio responsibility and their long-term commitment to the land: “We made what we thought was the appropriate investment to revitalize the property within our vision of bio responsibility and winemaking. To that end, this was a substantial undertaking financially, knowing full well that we are at the very beginning of a multigenerational undertaking.”