First came the jam. Then the flower sprinkles. And now, Meghan Markle has turned her attention to something a little more grown-up: rosé. The Duchess of Sussex is launching her first wine, a pale pink bottle of Napa Valley sunshine, via her online lifestyle brand, As ever. Given the rate at which her apricot preserves sold out – twice – we can reasonably expect this wine to vanish even faster.

Cue the eye-rolls, of course. Because if there’s one thing more predictable than celebrities releasing wine, it’s the reflexive backlash when Meghan does, well, anything. She could invent a cure for jet lag and people would still say she’s attention-seeking. But here’s the thing: Meghan isn’t doing anything new. In fact, she’s late to the party.

Celebrity wine is no longer a novelty. It’s a full-blown category, a supermarket aisle of famous faces turned vintners. From Francis Ford Coppola to Kylie Minogue, Sam Neill to Sarah Jessica Parker, Graham Norton to Snoop Dogg, there’s scarcely a walk of fame left untouched by fermentation. “What do a Jurassic Park actor, a former Neighbours star and the Doggfather all have in common?” would make an excellent pub quiz question. Answer: they all sell rosé. It is the weapon of choice for the celebrity winemaker – pastel, photogenic and perfectly pitched to the lifestyle-curious shopper who might not know malolactic fermentation from their elbow, but knows they trust Kylie more than they trust Chateau Something-or-other from somewhere they can’t pronounce.

In this context, Meghan’s move makes total sense. She’s curated a personal brand built on soft-focus domesticity, organic lemons and that elusive notion of “authenticity”. Rosé slots in neatly beside all that. It’s light, it’s pretty, it’s shareable. It has Instagram appeal and dinner-party versatility. Frankly, the only surprise is that it’s taken her this long.

Still, wine is a funny business. It has a way of making people feel excluded, uncertain or even slightly ashamed of their choices. There’s a whole industry built on mystique – on words like “terroir”, “structure”, “minerality”. For the uninitiated, celebrity labels offer a rare reprieve: a recognisable name, a safe bet, a kind of vinous comfort blanket. You know who Meghan is. You might have watched Suits. You might even like her jam. So when you’re standing in the supermarket wondering which rosé to pick up for the weekend and her bottle winks at you from the shelf, you reach for it.

This, ultimately, is the economy of celebrity wines. In some cases, they outsell everything else. Kylie Minogue’s rosé is the best-selling branded pink wine over £7 in the UK. Her brand has shifted more than 20 million bottles since launching in 2020, during a pandemic, no less, reportedly racking up more than £30m in sales. Kylie might be quietly making more money from rosé than she ever did from spinning around – and honestly, who could blame her? Meghan might not reach those numbers, but she doesn’t need to. She has cultural cachet. She has a story. She has fans. And she has critics, which is, paradoxically, just as useful. People love to hate a celebrity wine almost as much as they love to drink it.

Wine is not an easy business. Not really. It’s capital-intensive, time-consuming and riddled with risk, especially when climate change can wipe out entire harvests and global wine consumption is in steady decline. You’re essentially betting on the weather and the whims of the modern drinker. The old joke is that if you want to make a small fortune in wine, start with a large one. Meghan presumably has the latter, and it’s likely she’s partnered with a Napa producer who knows what they’re doing, but the challenges remain. Consistency. Quality. Scale. If her rosé is any good, people will want more. And if they can’t get more, the charm of the “limited drop” model may start to wear thin. Scarcity works when you’re selling handbags. It’s more frustrating when you’re selling jam, or wine, which people tend to consume and then want again.

Some will undoubtedly question the sincerity of the venture. Is Meghan a serious wine lover? Has she spent time in the vineyards, tasting barrel samples, debating yeast strains and brix levels? Possibly not. But this line of questioning is rarely applied to male celebrities. No one asked whether Brad Pitt understood carbonic maceration when Chateau Miraval launched. And anyway, involvement comes in degrees. Some celebs just sign off on labels; others, like Sam Neill or Sarah Jessica Parker, genuinely get stuck in. People might expect Meghan to be a wine expert, but let’s be honest – most consumers aren’t, and most don’t care about brix levels or battonage. They just want something nice to drink with dinner. If the wine tastes good and the bottle looks good, that’s often enough. What matters is whether the wine is decent – and whether people want to drink it.

Pale, pink and perfectly on brand: Meghan’s rosé enters a very crowded field ( As Ever )

And actually, a lot of celebrity wines are good. Graham Norton’s sauvignon blanc has been commended by proper wine critics. Sam Neill’s Two Paddocks pinot is one of the best quality pinot noir wines from central Otago, according to connoisseurs. Even Idris Elba’s £99 champagne Porte Noire went viral last year after TikTok wine expert Tom Gilbey declared it one of the best bottles he’d ever tasted; proof, if nothing else, that celebrity fizz can still turn heads for the right reasons. Meghan’s wine will almost certainly be made by a seasoned winemaker. She’s far too scrutinised to risk flogging something undrinkable. The backlash would be instant. And besides, it’s hard to be snobbish about celebrity wine when so many of them are… perfectly decent. Not life changing, perhaps, but pleasant, well made and priced to move.

And that, perhaps, is the rub. Celebrity wines rarely aim for the top of the market. They’re not chasing burgundy collectors or bordeaux obsessives. They’re targeting casual wine drinkers, the ones picking up a bottle alongside their cat food and oat milk. For these shoppers, the name on the label matters more than the vineyard it came from. And while sommeliers might scoff, these are the very consumers the wine industry desperately needs. Global wine consumption is falling. Young people are drinking less. The gap between fine wine and casual wine is widening. If a familiar face helps someone feel confident enough to buy a bottle, taste something new or simply enjoy wine without feeling judged, then isn’t that a net positive?

So yes, Meghan’s rosé will sell. People will snipe. But in truth, she’s just the latest in a long procession of famous faces trying their hand at the grape. Some will accuse her of chasing profit. Others will say she’s chasing credibility. Most likely, she’s chasing the same thing every celebrity is: relevance. Or hey: maybe she just likes wine. Don’t we all?

Will it become a proper brand, something with a second vintage, a broader range, a place on supermarket shelves? Maybe. Or it might just be a fleeting, artisan-flavoured moment, like that apricot jam. Either way, she’ll be judged more harshly than most. But if the wine’s good – and it might be, you know – then perhaps the fairest thing we can do is pour a glass and admit that for all the fuss, sometimes a bottle of pale pink wine is just that. A bottle of wine.

If it turns out to be lovely, well… we’ll have to find something else to be mad about.