Cameron Diaz Launches New Vegan, Organic White and Rose Wines with Katherine Power

Cameron Diaz just introduced her first project in years: Two new vegan, organic wines, one white, one rosé, called Avaline, which she created in partnership with her best friend Katherine Power, co-founder of Who, What, Wear and Clique Media Brands.

The two friends couldn't figure out what to call their new baby, so they did what many parents do: Scrolled through a list of baby names to find the one that just felt right. Now you can enjoy a glass of wine by the pool and trust that it's made with by best friends, using the best ingredients and no chemical additives. Or give a bottle to your best friend you haven't seen in quarantine–knowing you're giving her a healthier wine that's also light and chemical free.

Diaz, now a mom to Raddix and wife to Benji Madden of Good Charlotte fame, has not acted in five years, so this new launch made headlines when it was announced this week, as her fans always love learning what she's been up to. Meanwhile, she and Power, the fashion entrepreneur behind Who What Wear, have been her best friend for years now.

Power has grown her digital company to include its own fashion line and other media brands. The powerful duo found the perfect juxtaposition between wellness and wine and created a wine brand free of chemicals, sulfates, sweeteners, edible coloring, and animal-derived products.

Diaz and Power came up with the idea for Avaline when they got together for an afternoon drink and were chatting about clean products and living a healthy lifestyle. After sipping on wine, they came to the realization that they both were unaware of what was in the blend they were drinking.

Chatting about it in an Instagram video, Diaz had a moment of awe and said, "how good is this wine for us, and can we make it better?" Power replied, "isn't [wine made with] just fermented grapes?" Poking fun at themselves, Power implied that Diaz really had no idea about the process of wine. Diaz admits that she first thought "to add probiotics to make the wine healthier for us," but now she knows "it's not what you add, it's what you don't add to it."

Power explains on an IG video that she was frustrated and upset that she didn't know about vegan and organic wines sooner. "I went home and threw away every bottle of commercial wine I had," says Power. She further explains how most popular wine brands are full of chemicals and unhealthy ingredients. "Everybody buys them, but they're the worst offenders," she adds.

Diaz and Power spent time educating themselves on winemaking, discovering the horrendous behind the scenes of the process. “It starts in the vineyard, with the land, with how the grapes are cared for from the moment they come onto the vine," says Diaz in an interview with  InStyle. "If you're not drinking wine with organically grown grapes, you’re drinking pesticides — it's nothing you want inside of you.”

Diaz says they had an "Ah-ha moment" before partnering with Power to go into business. "Why don't we make our own wines?" She goes on to say, "not only are we going to make it clean wine, but we're also going to make organic and clean wine." The two of them point out that "there are a lot of vegans drinking wine that's not vegan." Diaz says, "there are animal by-products in wine, not all wines but some wines."

Power says that the most shocking thing they learned was that "Grapes are not washed when they're turned into wine," so chemicals and pesticides can get into the product. "That's when we booked our flight to France," says Diaz.

"We met with the winemakers who knew the taste we were looking for. We spoke with the woman that has created our rose for months and by then she knew exactly what we were looking for and exactly what we wanted to drink," says Diaz. "I'm so glad we did this because the demand for cleaner wine has gotten louder," says Power. Diaz replied, "absolutely."

Introducing the wine on Instagram, Katherine wrote: "If listing a wine’s ingredients seems like a given, that’s because it should be: after all, the practice is standard for almost every other consumable product. But that's not the case with wine.

While food and nonalcoholic beverages are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the wine industry is overseen by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (or TTB). The TTB does have some mandatory disclosures, yet it does not require companies to declare all ingredients used to make a wine, leaving consumers to unknowingly sip added sugars, colors, concentrates, heavy metals, non-organic materials, and animal by-products."

Cheers to Diaz and Power for their new innovation to wine. Power shares, "We hope [Avaline] inspires more clean products in the wine and spirits business." Never drink wine without knowing where it comes from. Avaline carries two wines for $24 each at the moment: White and Rose. They're not available for purchase yet but you can be notified when they are by typing in your email address on their website.