12 Celebrity Booze Brands You Should Know About

By and large, if someone is classified as or well known to be a "celebrity," chances are, they have cache in multiple arenas. Our society tends to place a premium on acting ability, exemplary good looks, musical excellence, and athletic prowess, and so we elevate the best of the best and pay them what the market can bear, be it millions for acting in a blockbuster movie, millions for recording a successful album, or millions for winning a sports championship.

How a celebrity chooses to spend the fortunes they accumulate is their business. Some spend it on cars, boats, and houses. Others invest it, putting their earnings into carefully vetted ventures. A handful of other famous people take their money and start a food business with it, placing their riches where it's very likely to make a profit — in the crowded but lucrative sector of spirits. The booze business is a crowded field, and bottles associated with a well-liked famous person might move a whole lot faster than the anonymous competition. Here are some of the most notable alcohol brands owned and or originated by celebrities.

For six seasons of Emmy-snatching television, Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul played partners in crime and something akin to friends on "Breaking Bad," a show about a high school chemistry teacher and his miscreant of a former student who become methamphetamine kingpins in part to fund the teacher's cancer treatments. They pretended to cook a lot of intoxicating drugs together in the New Mexico desert, which seems to have inspired real-life pals Cranston and Paul's brand of small-batch mezcal, a traditional Mexican spirit similar to tequila, made from the desert-based agave plant. In 2019, Cranston and Paul announced the launch of Dos Hombres Mezcal via simultaneous Instagram posts.

The brand's flagship release, Espadin (named after a common agave variety) promises notes of mango, apple, wood, smoke, and fruits native to the Oaxacan region of Mexico. Big spenders can opt for the limited edition Tobala mezcal which is aged for 25 years and retails for $349.  

Since retiring from a storied, Super Bowl-winning NFL career after the 2015 season, Peyton Manning has spent most of his work life in broadcasting, like providing ESPN commentary for "Monday Night Football" with his brother, Eli Manning, and partnering with another retired athlete to bring a highly-regarded bourbon to the market. In the mid-2010s, tennis star Andy Roddick and real estate developer Mark Rivers, played a round at the tiny Sweetens Cove golf course in Tennessee ( via Austin American-Statesman) The two liked it so much they bought the place, keeping in place a tradition of downing a shot of whiskey courtesy of one the old bottles in the shed before the first tee.

Roddick and Rivers eventually brought on Manning (a University of Tennessee alum) as an investor and face of the company. The new team decided to create a purpose-built bourbon for the course, and they brought in Kentucky master distiller Marianne Eaves to make it, tasking her with blending 100 barrels of 13-year-old bourbon from Tennessee. In 2020, the first bottles of Sweetens Cove Tennessee Bourbon were uncorked, a line of 14,000 bottles that cost $200 each, according to Esquire. That pedigree and expertise make for what seems to be a lovely bourbon. The Robb Report notes traces of cherry, cinnamon, and orange in the nose, with hints of brown sugar, nutmeg, pepper, and vanilla in the taste. "It tastes like a well-aged bourbon, suggesting there's nothing too young or too old in the blend."

Sam Heughan doesn't merely play a Scottish person on television — the passionately romantic 18th century freedom fighter Jamie Fraser on "Outlander" — he's a real-life Scot (via Hello!) having been raised in Dumfriesshire and now maintaining homes in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Scotland boasts one of the world's most storied and respected spirits in that it's the origin point of Scotch whisky, a grain-based distilled alcohol that offers intricate and elaborate depths in its aroma, taste, and texture. Heughan joined the Scotch whisky tradition when he founded Sassenach Spirits. With master blender Michael Henry at the helm, Sassenach bottles boldly flavored Highland varieties, combining nine-to-12-years-aged single malt Scotches with a 20-year-old grain whisky to make a proprietary combination that's reportedly well-balanced, but sweet, and containing notes of fresh fruit.

The flagship bottle of The Sassenach line is The Sassenach Blended Scotch Whisky. A heavily praised spirit, the beverage won gold, master, and best awards in numerous prestigious competitions including the New York World Wine and Spirits Competition, Scotch Whisky Masters, the International Spirits Challenge, and the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

At the heart of the eight-year run of The CW's horror soap "The Vampire Diaries" was a love triangle between two centuries-old bloodsucking brothers and a teenage human girl. Ian Somerhalder played the conniving, chaotic vampire Damon Salvatore, while Paul Wesley portrayed earnest and kindhearted Stefan Salvatore. The characters were often at odds, but the actors struck up a close and brotherly friendship and even started an alcoholic spirits company together. They developed a habit of drinking bourbon, the rich and sweet Southern-originated variant of whiskey, together on the set of "The Vampire Diaries." 

"We were shooting in the South, and I never really appreciated bourbon until I was living in Atlanta," Wesley told The Hollywood Reporter. (Somerhalder grew up in Louisiana, where bourbon consumption was exceedingly normal.) After a decade of being bourbon drinking buddies, Somerhalder and Wesley created Brother's Bond Bourbon, a reference to their TV characters. The drink itself is made from a copper-distilled mash of corn, wheat, rye, and malt, which purports to include hints of banana bread and oak.

The celebrity connection to Revel Spirits tequila started with a misunderstanding. According to Forbes, distillery founder Micah McFarlane walked up to Justin Hartley, best known for his roles on "This Is Us" and in "A Bad Mom's Christmas," and started talking to him, thinking he was a guy named Conrad. Despite the confusion, they hit off and McFarlane poured his new friend some of his life's work, and Hartley loved it so much that he soon joined Revel Spirits as a partner in the company's Avila line, tequila made only in the Morelos region of Mexico near the volcano Popocatepetl.

Revel Avila Añejo is a very elaborate tequila, and enthusiasts will pay top dollar for a rectangular glass bottle of the traditional Mexican spirit. It retails for about $150, but Revel is spending a lot of money and time on their craft. The 96-proof tequila is made from 100% blue Weber agave, which is roasted on volcanic rock for 72 hours to impart a smoky taste. The tequila is then aged for two full years inside French oak barrels (usually used to age and flavor fine wines) before it's triple distilled and bottled.

The quirky, lightly comic CW series "Supernatural" ran for 15 years, becoming one of the most beloved cult favorite TV shows of all time. The series followed the tightly bonded Winchester brothers as they took up after their father, traveling around to wage war with monsters and demons. "Saving people, hunting things," was "the family business," according to Dean Winchester, portrayed by Jensen Ackles, and when he started Family Business Beer Company, he kept that tradition going.  

Ackles is the co-founder of the brewery along with his wife (actress Danneel Ackles) and brother-in-law Gino Graul (via Forbes). Family Business has emerged as a hotspot in the hip, music-and-party-centric town of Austin. On tap at the outlet are a rotating array of ales, lagers, session-style IPAs, and aged stouts. Recent releases include Hamilton Pale (an ale), Cosmic Cowboy (an American IPA), and Golden Age, a low-alcohol Pilsner in the German style, which won a silver medal at the 2019 Great American Beer Festival.

While vodka is commonly distilled from wheat, rye, or potatoes, Bedlam Vodka is made from long-grain rice grown in Louisiana and Arkansas at a distillery in North Carolina. According to Business Insider, producer Graybeard Distillery took inspiration from a traditional family recipe developed in rural Bedlam, Ireland, during the catastrophic 19th-century potato famine. 

Beyond its unorthodox base ingredient, Bedlam is notable for its celebrity connection. One of the partners bringing the bottle to market and to the masses is R&B star Jason Derulo, best known for hits like "Whatcha Say" and "Talk Dirty." During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Derulo frequently promoted his vodka brand with Instagram and TIkTok videos. Beyond its smooth finish, Bedlam is an ideal choice for those looking for a gluten-free booze option. Consider buying a bottle the next time you plan on making a spicy Bloody Mary or summer sangria.

It's common knowledge that the most famous alcoholic beverage that can be made out of grapes is wine. But the versatile, juicy, skin-covered fruit can also be used to make hard alcohol or a distilled spirit. Wine is the product of fermented grape juice; spirits can be made by distilling, concentrating, and filtering that fermented grape juice. Jean-Sébastien Robicquet comes from a long line of French winemakers, and after studying winemaking, in 2003 he started Cîroc Ultra-Premium Vodka — which is made from the same item as his ancestors' wines: grapes. Unlike the vast majority of other vodkas, Cîroc is completely free of grain because it's made from fermented and distilled grape juice. 

Just four years after the novel vodka made a splash in the adult beverage market, rapper, producer, and music business player Sean Combs — alternately known by the handles Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, Diddy, Sean John, Swag, and Love — joined the Cîroc business. According to ChiefMarketer, the musician's company, Sean Combs Enterprises partnered with the Diageo PLC-owned vodka in 2007 and agreed to use his substantial fame and influence to promote the brand in the U.S. in exchange for half of all profits it generated. "I'm not just a celebrity endorser," Combs said at the time, "I'm a luxury brand builder."

The national drink of the South American nation of Bolivia is a distilled spirit called singani. Made from the Muscat of Alexandria grape for five centuries, the brandy wasn't produced, sold, or barely even heard of outside of the country until the last decade or so, but Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh is on a mission to bring attention and international acclaim to the spirit through his involvement with Singani 63.

Around 500 years ago, Spanish missionaries traveling deep into what's now Bolivia planted Muscat grapes (often used to make sweet wines) deep and high into the Andes mountains, finding they grew well at an altitude of about 5,000 feet, with the fruit's skins growing extra thick that imparted a wholly original flavor in the alcoholic beverage they produced. When Soderbergh began filming on "Che" his two-part epic about Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara in the region in 2007, his casting director gifted him a bottle, and he couldn't get enough. He struck up a business partnership with the family-owned Casa Real singani bottler, and after enduring a lot of governmental red tape, introduced Singani 63 to high-end bars in New York, Portland, and London.

After dominating the pop charts in the 2010s with number-one singles like "Just the Way You Are," "Grenade," and "Locked Out of Heaven," singer Bruno Mars teamed up with critically acclaimed musical Anderson .Paak to form the retro-soul duo Silk Sonic. Just after their collaboration "Leave the Door Open" hit #1, the duo released a follow-up — a catchy, 35-second commercial jingle for a young spirits brand called SelvaRey Rum. Mars explained on Instagram that he's not only a pitchman for SelvaRey, but also part of a collective of musicians who own the company.

With a Spanish name that translates to "jungle king," SelvaRey was created by the Independent Spirits Company. In 2014, Mars requested that SelvaRey rum be served at his parties and events, and he bought into the company officially the following year, per Bloomberg. The brand currently offers four different bottle options: its flagship white rum, a pair of flavored rums (coconut and chocolate), and the high-end Owner's Reserve which features a blend of rums aged between 15 and 25 years.   

When they exploded onto the music scene in 1997, Hanson made a quick and indelible impression with their bubblegum pop earworm "MMMBop." All three members played on and co-wrote the chart topper, which is all the more impressive because brothers Isaac, Taylor, and Zac Hanson were all literally children at the time. Flash forward two decades and while Hanson is still making music together, they've also got another project brewing (literally), trading in the bubblegum of youth for fermented adult beverages.

Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Hanson Brothers Beer Co. resembles countless other small craft breweries around the country, but this line of half a dozen beers just happens to be made by a '90s hit-making family band. Most varieties have straightforward names indicating exactly what's in the bottle, such as the Inland Porter and the Redland Amber Ale. Pink Moonlight, a collaboration with Destiny Brewery, incorporates lactose and peaches, while Tulsa Tea is a cocoa-and-hops-loaded imperial stout. It's no surprise that the signature brew is the one named after its founders' most famous song. Mmmhops is an English-style pale ale, and it took the Gold Medal in the 2013 World Beer Championships.

Walton Goggins may not be well known by name, but anybody who's watched even a little high-quality TV over the past two decades is familiar with his face and his work. He played minister "Baby" Billy Freeman on "The Righteous Gemstones," single dad Wade Felton on "The Unicorn," and villainous Wade Crowder on "Justified," for which he earned an Emmy nomination. Goggins boasts about 100 film and TV credits, and so he spends a lot of time in the entertainment production capital of Los Angeles, which is where he (and business partner Matt Alper) founded Mulholland Distilling which produces a trio of small-batch spirits: American-style whiskey, vodka, and gin. All three took home top honors at the prestigious San Francisco World Spirits Competition, with the distillery's vodka and whiskey earning silver medals and the gin receiving double gold honors.

Like Goggins, a scene-stealing character actor, Mulholland Distilling's products differentiate themselves by being a bit different and more potent than the many other spirits available in stores and bars across Los Angeles. The American Whiskey and New World Gin boast very high proof levels of 100 and 96, respectively, while the vodka is made entirely from corn, not the potatoes or grains traditionally used.