Cameron Diaz is officially in the wine business. The Charlie’s Angels star teamed up with her longtime pal Katherine Power to release a line of clean, organic wines made without additives or animal products.
Diaz, 47, and Power, 40, were inspired to create their own collection of wines, called Avaline, after realizing that many varieties on the market today are loaded with undesirable ingredients. “It starts in the vineyard, with the land, with how the grapes are cared for from the moment they come onto the vine,” Diaz explained to InStyle on Thursday, July 9. “If you’re not drinking wine with organically grown grapes, you’re drinking pesticides — it’s nothing you want inside of you.”
Despite thinking wine was “just fermented grapes,” the California native soon learned that the popular drink can actually be manipulated with over 70 additives. “When your mouth turns purple from drinking red wine? That’s not natural. That’s a coloring called Mega Purple,” she said, noting that many wines aren’t vegan-friendly. “People just assume the wine they’re drinking is vegan. Most wines are not — they’re filtered through either egg whites or fish bladder lining.”
After switching to organic, naturally produced wine, the duo, who met through Diaz’s sister-in-law, Nicole Richie, several years ago, saw “life-changing” results and knew they had to take matters into their own hands.
To create their own wine, which is clean, vegan-friendly, made with organic grapes and free of unnecessary add-ins like sugars, colors, and concentrates, the pair traveled all over Europe to sample as many varieties as they could. “This is definitely not a licensing deal; we’re not just putting our name or face on a product,” Power explained. “It’s been a long journey around the world to find the best winemakers for the taste profiles that we wanted, that met our health criteria. We literally knocked on doors in France and Spain and Italy.”
The line took about two years to create. Currently, it consists of a white blend and a rosé.
Diaz, who announced the arrival of daughter Raddix with husband Benji Madden in January, and Power used a baby name generator to select a “strong but feminine” moniker for their brand. “We had so many sessions searching for the name, it was crazy. There are literally hundreds of thousands of wines out there, so all the names were taken,” the Holiday star recalled. “I have pages and pages of baby names that we went through and this one was the one where we were both like, ‘Yeah, that’s it.'”
While the coronavirus pandemic has prevented the twosome from having a launch party for Avaline, they have been able to safely get samples to some friends, who are seriously impressed. As Diaz put it: “The response has been just as we had expected: ‘It’s the perfect rosé!'”
During an Instagram Live in April, the Body Book author opened up about how food and cooking have helped her get through the pandemic thus far. “My favorite thing in the world to do is cook … that’s my happy place,” she said at the time. “Cooking is everything.”
Diaz also shared that whipping up dishes in the kitchen and having a glass of wine at the end of the day helped “make it through” the current health crisis. “I want to cook,” she said. “I just cook every day, like it doesn’t matter, like I cook at least one meal, sometimes two, sometimes three. It’s just what I do.”
