Over the past five years, one of the music world’s most famous people has been quietly immersing herself and her family into the fabric of the Santa Ynez Valley.
Depending on the season, Alecia Moore can usually be found tending to her vineyard, cutting wooden vines during pruning season, pulling leaves to let in more springtime sun and summer breezes, and tasting the grapes as they ripen. In the mornings, she drops her daughter off at school, hits El Rancho Market or New Frontiers for groceries with her baby boy, and then sometimes rides motorcycles through the oak trees with her husband. And in the evenings, Moore — the Grammy-winning, chart-topping pop star who’s known from Auckland to Amsterdam simply by her stage name, P!nk — makes dinner in her kitchen, or dines out at S.Y. Kitchen, or shoots pool at Santa Ynez Billiards & Café as the owners hold her kids.
This is the new life that Moore has built, away from the spotlight, safe from the peering eyes of paparazzi, woven into a tight-knit community. As she prepares to release the first wines from her Two Wolves estate next month, Moore is naturally conflicted about letting this tranquil, hidden, rather normal side of her life become public. “It’s been my secret for five years,” Moore told me in June, when I spent a couple of hours with her exploring the Two Wolves property and hearing her stories. “I don’t get to have many secrets.”
Moore, who turned 39 on September 8, has lived her entire adult life in front of the world: Upon releasing her first solo album at age 20, she scored two Billboard Hot 100 top-10 hits and launched a career that won’t quit, full of world tours, a half dozen more albums, even the Super Bowl national anthem. “My dream,” she said, “would have been to release the wine anonymously.”
Such a strategy would disconnect this part of her life from the stage and avoid the cynical aspersions cast upon celebrity winemakers. But unveiling a winery anonymously wouldn’t make much sense: As wealthy as she is, wineries still need to pay bills, and she hopes to develop Two Wolves as a profitable concern that her children and even their children can continue. So this coming out leaves P!nk — a symbol of powerful women who don’t give a darn — actually scared of what people will think.
“You see her onstage or sit down with her at dinner, and she’s one of the most confident people you’ll ever meet, not cocky but confident,” said Chad Melville, a longtime winemaker who’s become good friends with Moore while helping her navigate the business. “This is one of those moments in her life where she’s vulnerable, and that’s a healthy feeling. She’s not sure how it’s all gonna go. I think that’s what makes her work hard and makes her be even more dedicated. Failure is not an option. It never has been for her.”
As Moore and I sit down at a table in a small room adjacent to her winery, with an array of empty glasses and three full bottles in front of us, Moore admits that I am the first journalist, really the first person outside of her inner circle, to try the wines. A cabernet franc, a petit verdot, and a cabernet sauvignon from a block that she hand-pruned herself, they are all excellent, showing both depth of fruit and bright acidity, a combination that conscious vintners across the world strive to achieve. Wearing a Michael Jackson Thriller T-shirt; a red-and-black flannel; torn jeans; tall, jangly boots; and a slightly pinkish spray of short blonde hair, she certainly doesn’t look like most vintners I meet. But my bet is that she’ll do fine.
“It’s the only other dream I’ve ever had, other than music and trying to have a happy family,” Moore explained. “I’m very excited, and I’m sort of sad,” she said of the Two Wolves debut. “It feels like I’m ripping the Band-Aid off.”