Mila Kunis: Demand for quarantine wine ‘blew our minds’

Actors Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis revealed that they sold out of the initial 2,000 case consignment of their ‘quarantine wine’ in eight hours, and have now raised around US$1 million from sales.

Appearing via video link on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, the couple said they’d received unprecedented demand for their wine – a Pinot Noir from Oregon.

The wine was launched last month by the actors, who posted a link on social media and stated that 100% of the profits would be donated to chosen charities providing Covid-19 relief.

Kunis said: “You have to do an allotment of cases. You have to pre-order juice. So we were, like, let’s just play it safe. We bought 2,000 cases. In eight hours, we sold out of the 2,000 cases. We were shocked – it blew our minds.” The couple have since procured more wine from the producer.

“We’ve raised, like, a million dollars,” Kutcher revealed.

The Quarantine Pinot Noir 2018 was produced from grapes sourced from the Willamette Valley in Oregon, and was made by winemaker Sarah Cabot of Battle Creek Vineyards.

Cabot told Oregon Live that she had made a total of 7,500 cases of the 2018 vintage.

Cabot works with Walla Walla-based Nocking Point, which was co-founded by Canadian actor Stephen Amell and owner of Source Audio, Andrew Harding. The company works with a selection of winemakers to source wines that have been “curated” by celebrities and influencers.

Harding told Oregon Live that demand for the wine had been “mind-blowing”, with two to three orders per second and 5,000 people on the website at the same time in the first morning after the launch.

Speaking on The Tonight Show, Kutcher praised the speed at which Nocking Point had been able to deliver the goods.

“We were thinking about doing a wine and our friends at Nocking Point turned things around very quickly. In three weeks, we had a label approved, a trademark, samples, figured out what was going in the bottle, and it was ready to ship,” he said.

According to the wine’s website, all profits from the sale will be split between charities including GiveDirectly, Direct Relief, Frontline Responders Fund, and America’s Food Fund.