In Vino, Celebritas - Part Two

Why do otherwise intelligent people buy celebrity wines? The answer tells us a lot about ourselves.

To date the British Sexual Fantasy Research Project has studied the fantasies of over 25,000 British and American adults. Among the findings the Principal Investigator, Brett Kahr explains:

approximately 25% of British adult participants will have had an orgasm while imagining a sexual scenario with a film star, pop star, television star, or sports star.

As it happens, Kahr has written more broadly on the subject of celebrity. And he has some firm views on the topic.

Kahr’s fascinating short book “Celebrity Mad: Why Otherwise Intelligent People Worship Fame” argues that celebrity worship stems from unresolved childhood needs. Not to mention narcissistic ideation, regression, and Freudian ideas about scopophilia - the pleasure in looking - and a good deal of erotic projection. Which I suppose would explain why one in four of us/you are thinking about celebrities while having sex.

You’ll perhaps not be surprised to hear that Professor Brett Kahr is a Freudian psychotherapist.

While reading Kahr’s book last week I did wonder if this explains the extraordinary success of Kylie Minogue’s wines, which have to date sold more than 20 million bottles. It also made me think about the more modest success of other celebrity brands. Like Lord (Sir) Ian Botham’s wine range. Wines which have sold less, in spite of being created with the same team (Benchmark Drinks), and receiving high critical praise for their quality. For instance Lord Botham’s top Chardonnay has been listed among Matthew Jukes 100 Best Australian Wines.

Maybe the reason for this is tied to Brett Kahr’s research into orgasms and celebrity. Maybe wine drinkers just want to sleep with the Australian princess of pop an awful lot more than they’d like a bit of hanky-panky with one of greatest English cricketers of the modern era.

There are two problems with this

One problem is the sexual maths don’t add up. I think we can reasonably expect that Kylie’s typical wine buyer will tend to skew towards heterosexual women and gay men. Because that’s who Kylie’s fans tend to skew towards. Hardly two groups who will be fantasising about sleeping with her.

The other - as they say in Yorkshire - is “there’s nowt so queer as folk”. In Kahr’s research he reports “an elderly male scientist” who told him “he could reach orgasm only by fantasising that the Swedish monarch had presented him with a Nobel prize.¹” I’ve met Ian Botham several times, and been at dinner with the King of Sweden. Neither do it for me… but that doesn’t mean we can’t speak for others. It’s entirely possible there are 20 million wine shoppers out there who’d love a bit of a go on Beefy. As his autobiography put it, just “Don’t tell Kath”.

Anyway, as we’ve mentioned Sweden, in the first installment of this series we looked at the extraordinary popularity of celebrity wines in Sweden. It’s free to read (still) here:

We saw there how celebrity wines seem to fill a gap created by the Swedish monopoly retail system.

But that also means we can’t expect the same mechanism to be true of the UK, USA, Australia, Germany, or any number of other liberalised wine markets.

So what is behind the popularity of celebrity wines? And what does it tell us about wine choice more widely? And can wine makers and marketers use that to sell wines? Even if they don’t have a friendly celebrity to hand?