The Sex and the City star's wine collaboration with Invivo is coming to a cellar near you. Here we speak to Sarah Jessica Parker about this must-have summer drop
While her Sex and the City character Carrie Bradshaw may have made sipping on Cosmopolitan cocktails all the rage, Sarah Jessica Parker is pushing a pink drink of a different kind this spring, as her rosé collaboration with winemakers Invivo lands in Scandinavia this spring.
The Invivo X, SJP Sarah Jessica Parker Rosé comes from the south of France, with Parker and her partners at New Zealand-based winery Invivo Tim Lightbourne and Rob Cameron selecting a family winery in Provence. The final blend was selected by SJP and Invivo over an afternoon of tasting and assessing in New York City.
"Blending the rosé was an experience I never thought I would be participating in and was not only great fun but, as always with my partners at Invivo, informative, surprising, delicious and wonderfully satisfying," says Parker. "I am so looking forward to adding it to our collection of wines."
Photo: Invivo X SJP
Parker entered winemaking in 2019, when she launched the first rosé vintage alongside the Invivo X, SJP Sauvignon Blanc. The wines have met with widespread acclaim, picking up more than 50 awards (including seven gold medals) and 90-plus points ratings by Wine Spectator, which also featured the vintages in their top '100 most exciting wines of 2020'.
Such accolades prove the bottles are more than just celebrity endorsement vehicles, and Parker has lofty ambitions for the wines that carry her name as they arrive in the Scandinavian market. "We hope our wines are able to enlighten all of the senses," she says. "When I think of our customers in Norway and Sweden drinking our wines, I hope they are enjoying every part of the experience, from smell and taste through to enjoying with a meal or sharing with friends."
Invivo's Rob Cameron agrees that it's an "incredibly food friendly wine" and says one of his favourite pairings is with a bowl of frites served with aioli. "Coming from the south of France, it has a beautiful minerality to it and is exceptionally fresh with subtle summer berry characters. That’s why it goes well with whole heap of foods," he adds. "It’s great with any kind of seafood or grilled meats and vegetable and tomato-based dishes. It’s also excellent with a classic Caesar salad - be sure to go heavy on the anchovies: the oily texture and saltiness in them are a perfect match to the minerality and subtle fruit flavours of the rosé."
Parker is also a fan of the fruitiness. "Our French Rosé is dry but has such a fragrant nose and a subtle taste of wild strawberries," she says. "When we arrived upon our final rosé blend, I wondered if people would almost believe it’s real because of its strawberry notes."
Photo: Supplied Invivo X SJP
The grapes come from Vins Chevron Villette, a family winery located in the famous 'Golden Triangle' for winemaking in Saint Tropez, inland between Puget-Ville, Les Arcs and Le Thoronet Abbey, which was built in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. The vineyard uses cutting-edge technology and strives to be eco-friendly by running almost entirely on solar energy.
There's naturally a French accent to the wine therefore - plus plenty of winemaking experience behind the celebrity name on the bottles. But Cameron insists that Parker played a key role in the vintages' development. "A big part of our blending sessions are the personality of the blenders, and we look at what we are trying to achieve with the wine and what is the wine saying. At Invivo we have always had a strong sense of voice as winemakers and Sarah Jessica is no different: she has a clear vision but at the same time the ability to adapt to how wines express themselves when blended, and that makes this collaboration so exciting. Sarah Jessica is truly developing a very drinkable style of wines, focusing on full bodied texture but equal aromatic intensity."
Wine drinkers in Scandinavia will soon get to judge for themselves, with the SJP Rosé on its way to the region in time for spring.
SJP Rosé is available in Finland now and from May 4 in Norway. It will soon be available in Sweden too, though its exact launch date is still to be confirmed. The Sauvignon Blanc is expected to follow in 2023.