Seven Daughters Sparkling Brut is the third bottle on the shelf since the wine brand relaunched in 2024, and Taraji P. Henson said the thing people were going to say anyway. “Consumers are smart; they know a money grab when they see one,” she said.
That is the charge every celebrity drink brand answers, and it gets answered with work or it does not get answered at all. Henson is a strategic advisor and creative collaborator on Seven Daughters, which she makes with Terlato Wine Group, and she helped develop the bottles themselves. They carry bulldogs, a purse and theatrical masks, references to her Broadway run in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
She is equally direct about what she is not. “I’m not a sommelier, I don’t pretend to be one,” she said. What she says she is working on is the way in. “If you’re growing a wine base, people that are new to wine, we want to elevate their palate a little bit,” she said.
The price is part of that argument. Sparkling Brut sells for $15.99. It is a Charmat method sparkling wine from Veneto, Italy, blending 50 percent Glera, 40 percent Chardonnay and 10 percent Pinot Noir at 11 percent alcohol, with green apple, pear and citrus on the nose. It joins the brand’s Moscato and Red Blend.
The Moscato is the proof of concept. Terlato says it is the fastest-growing Moscato priced above $10 in sales, citing Nielsen data, and Somm.ai ranks it the top-selling Moscato in United States on-premise establishments.
Ownership is the other half of her answer. Henson recently took full ownership of TPH, the haircare brand she built around a gap she named herself. “No one was talking about scalp care,” she said. Through the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation, named for her late father, she works on mental health access in Black communities. Her Netflix film Give Me Some Sugah, about Chicago baker Lenore Lindsey, premieres December 16.
Her advice to anybody watching and thinking about starting something is not soft. “Starting businesses, expect hardships. Expect it,” she said. “Fall down and get back up, because you’re the only person in your way.”
