Carmelo Anthony Launches Global Wine Estate Brand With An Aim To Break Barriers For Winemakers Of Color

Anthony’s new venture may come as no surprise to those who have previously tapped into his YouTube series “What’s in Your Glass?” — foreshadowing his dive into the industry.

After acquiring knowledge of wine and expanding his palette, the entrepreneur felt it was the right time to further explore how wine, sports, and culture intertwine by contributing to the space.

The decision for his brand’s debut release to be Oath of Fidelity Châteauneuf-du-Pape was based on him wanting to educate himself and “really go to a place that was untapped.” Respect, strategy, and disruption are all factors that Anthony is coming into with its launch in the fall.

“My goal is not to rush, and to be here for a long time,” he shared in his cover story with Haute Living. “This is not something that can happen overnight. My goal is to get it right, make as few mistakes as I can, but make mistakes, because that’s how I’ll learn. I know that to start, it’s not going to be perfect. It may work, it may not, but that’s the wine game. My goal is to build a community in the wine space where we can interact with one another. We can talk, we can laugh and joke, we can sell wine, we can drink wine, and taste wine. My goal is to build my house. I’m going to build the Seventh Estate.”

With his upcoming release on the horizon, Anthony is already looking at the bigger picture for the near future. During his sit-down with the outlet, he expressed how he wants to help winemakers of color.

“For so long, Black winemakers haven’t gotten a fair shake; they haven’t gotten their shot. I’ve tasted some great wines by winemakers of color, and nobody’s really doing anything substantial in that lane. So that was a goal that we talked about constantly from the beginning, about what we want this brand to be and that was the first thing that came to mind. We have to support winemakers of color. We have to support smaller vineyards. We have to support these people who are really out there, hand and feet, picking and going into the fields all day long because they don’t have the resources to build teams and distribution.”

He continued: “I’m trying to bring eyeballs and awareness to a lot of these smaller winemakers, and winemakers of color at that, so I’m just creating a platform that maybe can jumpstart a lot of these smaller vineyards and give the winemakers grants. That may be phase two or three of our launch down the line, but it’s definitely something that’s on the drawing board for us.”