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Fans shocked to discover where Meghan's products are really made
It's official. Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex has added 'vigneron' to her ever-growing fleet of job titles that already includes jam seller, flower sprinkle proselytiser, tele producer, candle making instructor, apiarist, podcaster, handbag and vegan latte company investor, children's book author, former working HRH, calligrapher, actress and blogger, and designated cheerer upper-er of Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex. On Tuesday, on what would have been her mother-in-law Diana, Princess of Wales' 64th birthday, the duchess finally got into the vino business, launching her As Ever lifestyle brand's first bottle of the good stuff, a rosé, which sold out in less than an hour. But even when shelves are restocked again, I'm assuming by an overalls-wearing Harry supportively proudly working up some manly calluses on his hands, don't expect it to land in your local bottle-o near anytime soon. To even try the drop would cost you AUD$167, hardly making it Friday drinks-quaffable stuff. (The 'dry, and refreshing' blend was only sold with a minimum order of three bottles, reportedly due to shipping costs and for environmental reasons.) That works out at about $45 a bottle for which you could also get 2.4 bottles of Kylie Minogue's rosé, 3.2 bottles of Snoop Dogg's, and 1.2 bottles of Daniel Riccardo's version. Should the logistics of getting your hands on a taste of Meghan's wine be surmounted, don't expect it to have been produced anywhere near the Sussexes' Montecito home. According to the Telegraph the tipple is produced by the Fairwinds Estate in Napa Valley, 630 km north and a six hour drive away. The Napa Valley vineyard where Meghan sourced her rosé also reportedly makes wines for other starry wine labels, including those of Barry Manilow and John Wayne. (Who knew that Wayne, after ridin' his trusty steed into some fly-bitten frontier town, loved nothing more than moseying over to his the saloon for a big, bold grenache?) In the last couple of weeks more details have emerged about where As Ever products are sourced from. Sure, As Ever is a brand built on the image of shimmering, sun-kissed shots of Meghan picking apricots and flowers in her picturesque garden and her contentedly stirring a bubbling pot of jam in her kitchen, all very David Hockney-meets-Delia Smith. However, so far the provenance of some As Ever lines appears to be far less hashtaggable and dreamy. The first scene of the duchess' With Love Meghan series showed her tending to her bees, whispering 'Look at how much honey we have' but Daily Mail has reported that As Ever's range of fruit spreads, herbal teas, flower sprinkles and honey are sourced from a company which has a factory 3,200 plus kilometres away in Illinois. (Their headquarters are 560 plus kilometres away in California.) The firm, called The Republic of Tea, also makes Bridgerton and Downton Abbey-branded tea. Thanks to the Mail putting the calculator app to good use, The Republic of Tea's hibiscus tea bags work out at costing $0.48 per cup of tea while the As Ever ones are $1.52 each. Let's be realistic here. The Duchess of Sussex might be a passionate home cook and her kitchen might have the same square meterage of a mid-size metro two-bedder but to commercially produce enough jam, sorry spread, was always going to require outside help. Likewise her teabags. Did anyone really think that Harry was down the shed, neatly spooning dried hibiscus petals into little sachets and mulling his life choices? Of her products, a source close to Meghan told the Mail, they 'started with the version Meghan makes at home and worked to develop a version of it that could be produced at scale.' Fans clearly don't give a fig about where duchess' As Ever goodies are actually being cooked up with all three of the As Ever stock releases selling out in less than 60 minutes. (On June20, the second day the duchess' wares went on sale, the brand's website was visited half a million times, the Mail has reported.) However, the As Ever roll out has not been all peachy. The 43-year-old will give out free jars of her spread after a technical issue saw the site continue to take orders after overselling on the release of June's 'summer drop'. Something similar happened with sales of As Ever honey in April with the site providing refunds and offering free products after they continued selling honey after stock had actually run out. Depending on your Sussex stance, this either only reflects the high degree of public demand for Meghan's products and how hungry Americans are to buy into her charmed As Ever vision or says something about a business struggling to find its feet. As the Daily Beast's Tom Sykes pointed out ahead of the rosé's debut, As Ever's non- alcoholic products have only been available for purchase for less than two hours in the three months, which equates the As Ever's food 'shelves [having] been fully stocked for just 0.01 percent of the time' since launch. What remains to be seen is whether this all only cultivates an air of exclusivity and rarity and whets shoppers' appetites or whether it will just frustrate them. Also, does only having products on sale for less than an hour, every so often, make for a sustainable, profitable business concern? In March the Telegraph reported that the Duchess of Sussex 'thinks she's going to be a billionaire' thanks to her growing portfolio of ventures and projects. At least we know this, if Harry has been helping out behind the scenes, it might not have all been hard graft. The production of Meghan's proprietary blend of rosé saw the duchess 'heavily involved' for 'many months,' per the Telegraph, which included 'roping in friends and colleagues to conduct multiple taste tests at her home.' Hard work if you can get it.
