Gia Coppola has entered a new chapter, and her wine brand reflects just that.
“My life is so different, you know, and I wanted the brand to represent what appeals to me now,” she said.
The 37-year-old filmmaker released the line in 2018 during her post-college years in collaboration with her grandfather, the celebrated filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, under the umbrella of his winery of the same name. It showcased big bottles with crown caps, made with parties in mind. Now, as a mom to a 16-month-old boy, she’s at a different stage.
“My nightlife consists of just staying at home and cooking dinner with my close friends,” she went on.
This time around she used organic grapes, introducing two California reds for $45 each — a 2022 red blend featuring Paso Robles grape varieties like zinfandel and syrah, and an earthy 2022 cabernet sauvignon. They’re available nationally at francisfordcoppolawinery.com for purchase.
You May Also Like
“It’s tomato season, so I’ve been enjoying making, like, chicken paillard,” she said of her go-to dishes lately, to pair with the new bottles. “It feels really easy. You just put it on the grill on top of arugula with tomatoes. I feel like that’s a nice pairing for a summer day with a deep red. And pasta, a good pomodoro pasta, I’m always trying to master pasta.”
The new bottles have a different look — at a standard size with a cork — but what remains is the artistry; Coppola has been featuring her photographs. One bottle shows a cat lying against a pink backdrop while the other is an image of sand-colored curtains with sunlight shining through.
“I knew designing a label wasn’t for me,” she explained. “One of my uncles picked up a bottle saying, ‘This is a fat cat wine,’ and so that nickname stuck. And I’m a cat lover. My mother fosters and rescues cats, so I like appealing to the cat community. I liked keeping that image and keeping a little bit of familiarity with the existing brand. And then the curtain image was something of a blank slate that was from a still on one of my movies.”
Coppola made her film debut with “Palo Alto” in 2013, and days ago, she premiered “The Last Showgirl” at the Toronto International Film Festival, starring Pamela Anderson, who’s receiving critical acclaim for the role.
“I’m so happy for Pamela, because I feel like she really deserves it,” Coppola said of the project. “She’s such a wonderful, beautiful person inside and out. And, you know, I saw her documentary, and that really proved to me that she was the only person that could play this character. And I’m just so happy that she is getting to prove and show off her talents that were always within her, that I think the media always kind of diminished.”
Comparing filmmaking to winemaking, she continued: “With movies, you kind of have one shot and you’re done with it, whereas wine can keep evolving with you as you grow into an adult, which I think has been really the progression of these wines. They’ve been evolving with me as I age.”
Her first wine memory was at the dinner table with family: “As a kid, I was allowed to mix ginger ale and wine in my glass, because it’s bad luck to cheers without any wine in a cup, unless you kiss your glass of water if you’re not drinking. But my family wanted me to experience and learn the different kind of flavors. And if it’s just a little splash in your ginger ale, it’s not like you’re really getting alcohol as a kid. It’s just the etiquette. So, I can remember that flavor of adding a little bit of the bitter wine to my bubbly ginger ale and it just being the best. And apparently my mother said that — and it’s a memory I don’t necessarily have — but she said I used to slip out of my crib and then drink all the leftover wine glasses on the table.”
After college, where she studied photography, she looked to experience a different endeavor, she said. “So, I told my family I was going to go to bartending school, and they were very confused. But I loved it. It was just fun to be interactive with my hands and learn the history of alcohol.”
The experience led her to working as a barback at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in Beverly Hills.
“To work there you have to go through this big immersion of learning about wines and food and etiquette,” she said. “And it was so interesting to me to have this form of school, in a way, just to learn how to work in a restaurant. And working as a barback, I developed a genuine interest in how wine is made. And the science behind it is very complex and kind of gets over my head, but it’s always fun to do my best in learning and immersing myself in that.”
She had been immersed in winemaking since she was a child; raised in Los Angeles, the family winery in Napa Valley was an escape: “It’s such a magical place. I’m so grateful to have that to get out of the L.A. bubble, and just as a kid being surrounded by nature and picking grapes in the fall and making grape jelly with my grandma.”
Growing up, wine was a relaxed, unassuming experience, and it’s what she hopes to share with her brand.
“So much of wine has this stuck-up, pretentious aura around it,” she said. “So much of my family’s brand is making wine accessible to anyone.”
Next, she looks to create more varietals, including introducing a chilled red: “I still feel like I’m always learning.”
