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Keira Knightley has revealed she’s sold the beloved French vineyard where she married musician James Righton, admitting it was ‘difficult’ to keep their passion project going.
The Love Actually star, 40, opened up this week about letting go of the property – previously valued at £3 million – as she reflected on the realities of trying to run a hands-on, organic wine operation with Klaxons keyboardist James, 42, whom she wed in 2013.
‘I have written about wine, and I’ve written about food just because I like eating it – can’t cook it, but like eating it,’ Keira said on the Dish Podcast.
‘I like wine and I like drinking wine. James is super into wine. Actually, I used to have a place in France and we made our own wine.’
The couple owned Les Cinq Puits – French for ‘the five wells’, a name taken from the five natural springs in the vineyard where the wine was made – near the slopes of Mont Ventoux in the Rhone Valley, where they became immersed in the traditions of small-scale winemaking.
‘We made five cuvees of grenache,’ Keira said, referring to the different batches of red wine they made, ‘which was amazing because it was organically made. We did everything by hand and we did the old stamping of the grapes and the whole thing.’
The project was deeply practical and labour-intensive, with the couple committing to organic methods and traditional techniques.
‘It was actually drinkable,’ Keira added. ‘It was absolutely amazing. We got really into it. It’s great because of the stories of the winemakers.’
The vineyard produced limited quantities of Grenache-based wines under the Ventoux label, overseen with the help of local winemakers, Luc and Sandrine Guenard, and sold through specialist outlets – including in the UK – rather than mass-market launches.
But despite the romance of stamping grapes and producing organic wine, Keira admitted there were challenges behind the scenes.
‘It’s an extraordinary thing – how they make them and how difficult it is, particularly if you’re doing it organically,’ she explained. ‘We don’t have the vineyard now.’
The property had a very special place in her heart as it was where she and James married in 2013.
They held a low-key ceremony attended by family and close friends, including actress Sienna Miller, with the bride wearing a beautiful Chanel ivory dress and matching jacket on the day.
The couple, who first met in 2011 at a mutual friend’s dinner party in London, have two daughters – Edie, ten, and Delilah, six.
Keira has spoken recently about the pressures of balancing motherhood with her career, choosing roles more selectively and stepping back from projects that would require long periods away from home in London.
‘For actors that’s very difficult because we move all over the world,’ she said in October. ‘So, I’ve really tried to kind of keep it in London, and been really fortunate that I could make that work.’
Over the years, a string of famous names have invested in vineyards, particularly in France and Italy.
Former Hollywood couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie famously co-owned Chateau Miraval in Provence, whose rose became a global bestseller.
It has since been at the centre of a long-running legal dispute after Angelina sold her stake in the winery following her split from Brad in 2016.
Music icon Sting produces organic wine at his Tuscan estate, Il Palagio, while The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola owns several wine estates across California and Italy.
Aussie pop star Kylie Minogue has also enjoyed major commercial success with her eponymous wine label.
Unlike many celebrity-backed wine ventures, however, Keira and James’s operation remained small and artisanal – a passion project rather than a commercial venture.
