How did the all organic brand Avaline catapult into 2025-6's list of wineries achieving double digit growth wineries? Is organic resonating with consumers? If well made and marketed...yes.
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Founded by actress Cameron Diaz, a Hollywood star, and Katherine Power, an entrepreneur with several hit brands in beauty and fashion, in 2019, Avaline imports organically grown wines and brands them with Avaline branding, while also crediting the wine’s producer source (on its website under each wine description).
The fast growing brand is widely available at Target, Sprouts, Whole Foods, Total Wine and many other retail outlets.
At Sprouts, Avaline recently surpassed Sprouts’ sales of Josh, a conventionally grown wine that is a top seller nationally. It also surpassed Bonterra in sales at Sprouts, Avaline’s CEO Jen Purcell said.
In May of 2025, Business of Drinks podcast host Erica Deucy interviewed Avaline CEO Purcell about the company’s success, pointing out in her introduction that “Avaline is more than a celebrity-backed brand. It’s a category-shaping brand. In 2024 alone, Avaline sold 213,000 cases.” That earned it a Hot Brand from Shanken News Daily.
But the following year was even better. Avaline hit 300,000 cases in sales.
Said Deucy, “We’re talking nearly 50% growth in a category that saw contraction.”
“What’s driving this growth?” Deucy continued. “It is a radically different approach to wine. It’s about simple and transparent labeling, the use of organic grapes, and messaging that is wellness-forward and frictionless.
“The label itself doesn’t focus on terroir. It tells you the ingredients and what the wine tastes like. And it’s the brand’s willingness to really distance itself from traditional and staid wine language and harness the signifiers found in beauty, wellness and modern food brands.”
Its target demographic? “Tech savvy, health conscious women between 35 and 54,” Purcell said. It takes its cues in branding from fashion and wellness trends, leaning into female buyers.
Listen to the full interview in the podcast. 63: How Avaline Became a $33M Wine Powerhouse with CEO Jen Purcell - Business of Drinks
Avaline’s Brand History
Avaline initially launched in Sprouts in 2020 and in 2021 began its DTC, ecommerce channel. The vast majority of sales are still in retail outlets.
Avaline’s investors include Greycroft (which funded Powell’s other ventures), Marcy Venture Partners (co-founded by Jay-Z), H Venture Partners, Plus Capital, and Sonoma Brands. Angel investors include Gwyneth Paltrow and Nicole Richie. By 2021, it had raised $14.6 million from investors. Today it has reached more than $33 million in sales.
Avaline’s two bestselling wines; rosé and an unconventional white blend from Spain
What makes Avaline different from the biggest domestic organic brand, Bonterra?
Avaline’s branding is more upscale and fashion forward, but it also lists ingredients (transparency), messages “no added sugar” (often 0 grams total), displays nutrition facts and emphasizes “no unnecessary additives.”
And all of the winemakers are in the EU –where the organic wine market and organic acreage for organically grown wines is 4-5 times bigger than in the U.S. with a wide selection of producers to create private label wines.
Unconventional Marketing for the Wine Industry
A lot of Avaline’s strategy is born out by current market research–listing ingredients, messaging low calorie and no sugar, ingredients transparency–but no one had ever put all of those things into play in the marketplace with the added attributes of fashion and film celebrities who can appear on TV talk shows.
On the other hand, market researchers have consistently been saying that these consumers were asking for these attributes, but wineries did not appear to be listening.
“Better for you” brands were a halfway step-but not organic. Domestic wineries did not cultivate this demographic with well made and well marketed wines. And major retailers like Whole Foods never fully embraced organically grown wines, apparently since few domestic brands had the capacity to scale nationally.
In Berkeley and Oakland, where I live, one can hardly find an organically grown rosé (from any country) at a local Whole Foods.
Finding enough organic grapes and really good organically grown wine in the U.S. may have been a hurdle for domestic producers as growers are often resistant to growing organically, fearing it is financially risky. Though warmer wine growing climates are often similar in California and the three main EU wine grape growing countries, European producers have a different culture and mindset, with 20% of wine grape acreage certified organic in France, Italy and Spain.
Organic in Lodi?
At the same time, a few U.S. growers see organic as a path to prosperity. Giant Vino Farms in Lodi has found it can charge 2-3 times more for certified organic grapes, while its farming costs rise only around 10 percent for organic. It’s also fueling a new, all organic Avivo brand as well as selling grapes to many artisanal, boutique wineries whose consumers value organic certification.
CEO Purcell: “Avaline was really founded out of their need (for the founders) to understand what they were putting in their bodies and something that they were consuming, a fair amount of, which was wine.”
Avaline’s founders, Purcell said, “realized they didn’t understand anything about what was being put in that bottle. I think that when we first launched, a lot of traditional wine buyers were a little bit confused. They’re like' ‘why aren’t you putting the vintage on the bottle?’
Or why aren’t you talking about where this wine is from, or their terroir, or anything like that?”
“But we were like, well, the research that we’ve done has shown that research that we've done has showed that the consumer doesn't care [about those things]…the consumer does care about what they’re putting in their body, what this wine is made out of. And they have no idea what that is for any other wine. And so I think that really has differentiated us in the market-leaning into those messages.”
Showing Some Rizz
The brand’s growth earned Avaline a spot in Fast Company’s Brands That Matter 2025. That year Avaline “launched a wine with Stella McCartney, celebrating the limited-edition rosé with a cocktail party that had Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Andy Cohen in attendance,” the magazine wrote.
The Stella McCartney rose
“Those activations have helped the brand grow online, especially on Instagram, where Avaline is the most followed U.S.-based wine brand globally with 240,000 followers (a number that grew 8% year over year in 2024),” the magazine continued.
“Think Different” | A Unique Start
Avaline’s earliest wine hits were not the usual varietals marketers lean into–Cabernet and Chardonnay. The original four wines were a sparkling, a red blend, a white blend and a rosé.
Today, they’ve expanded into those common varieties and more, launching red sets, white sets, welcome sets and more. They offer a six bottle wedding set. The brunch set is positioned as “a curated way to bring ease, beauty, and organic wine to any spring table.”
Beauty. Another differentiator.
The Goal? Be a Top 10 Brand
The brand’s emphasis on integrity, organics and authenticity puts it in stark contrast with other celebrity brands.
• Sarah Jessica Parker’s Invivo X, a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, now sold with Jalapeño with Natural Flavor
• Snoop Dog’s 19 Crimes (Treasury Wine Estates)
• Dolly Wines, Dolly Parton’s new brand
One other celebrity driven, supermarket priced wine with organic grapes is Whoopi Goldberg’s DOCG Prosecco launched in 2025. It sells online for $23 a bottle online. So far it is the brand’s only wine.
Seeking Even More Growth
In 2025, Avaline switched from RNDC to a national partnership with Southern Glazer’s, aiming to continue its strong retailer growth.
In her podcast interview Purcell said the brand wants to become one of the top 10 wine brands in the country. “That is our ultimate goal.”
As a brand that leans into lifestyle marketing and good wine, with solid financial backing, it appears to be headed in the right direction–at a time of down markets for wine. Will the industry pay attention to these consumer trends?
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