Bottom’s up! It’s no secret that many celebrities like to drink alcohol, but some have taken that infatuation a step further by launching their own spirit brands.
What’s more? These entrepreneurial stars tend to make a pretty penny thanks to their wines, whiskeys and more. For Nina Dobrev, getting to work with her close pal Julianne Hough on their passion project was the real icing on the cake.
“It’s so much more exciting when you create a company with your best friend. It’s made this experience so much more enjoyable and exciting to have someone to share it with,” Dobrev told The Hollywood Reporter in May 2021 about launching Fresh Vine Wines with the dancer. “At the end of the day, life is about sharing things with people you love, laughing and enjoying every single moment, the highs and the lows. It’s been such a high with Julianne.”
The duo decided to work on making health-conscious wines because of their shared lifestyles.
“Nina and I are total polar opposites but we have the same values and a lot of the same interests. One of those things is that we’re very active. We try to live a healthy, sustainable life,” Hough noted to THR in May 2021.
It was through brainstorming what they thought was lacking elsewhere in the wine world that the pair came up with their own concept.
“We thought, how do we still enjoy and have pleasure in life while not constantly counting calories or taking away from the enjoyment of life. At the same time, how do we not feel guilty or physically terrible?” the Dancing With the Stars alum added at the time. “And how do we create something enjoyable and sustainable? That’s when we were realized nobody’s really doing this.”
The Vampire Diaries alum wasn’t alone in branching out into a new business venture after her time on the CW show. Her former costars Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder also decided to turn their real-life bond into something exciting, which eventually became Brother’s Bond Bourbon.
“The reality is we would finish shooting and we’d go to the bar or we’d go to our homes or whatever, but we’d always kick back and have a bourbon so we developed this love for bourbon,” Wesley told Entertainment Weekly in April 2021 about creating the whiskey brand based off of their fictional characters’ connection to the drink.
Wesley admitted that it was the perfect reunion for him and Somerhalder after wrapping up their time on The Vampire Diaries in 2017.
“So we fell in love with it. And when the show ended, we finally had some time and we really put this thing together. We’re just so proud of it,” he told EW.
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Scroll down to see which famous faces are also the forces behind some super successful alcohol brands: