For You Winos

Sogno Uno
(Dream One)
A Porn Star's Wine

Surprisingly, a rating of 91 to 95 out of 100 by Parker.

The lady shown here has an unusual pair of careers: porn star and winemaker. Savanna Samson, famous for her long career in the adult film industry, will be releasing a wine called Sogno Uno (Dream One) in February. We have seen this sort of stunt casting when it comes to celeb wines before but what is intriguing is that the wine has already been given 91 points by Robert Parker and will be available in restaurants in New York including the posh Restaurant Daniel. The new wine is a blend of 70% Cesanese, 20% Sangiovese and 10% Montepulciano and Samson did the tasting herself. The wine is expected to sell for $35-$40 and only 400 cases of the 2004 have been produced. There are plans to make a white Sogno Due (Dream Two) and a champagne in the future.

The release of the wine - at New York’s La Masseria restaurant - was initially due to coincide with the New Year but the launch has been put back due to problems with the label, which features an airbrushed picture of Samson posing in a see-through dress (similar to the image above).

The holdup is due to concern over whether or not she will be able to call the wine Vino de Tavola or simply Italian Red Wine as the grapes are sourced from different regions.

The actress, whose husband is a New York wine merchant, plans to make a white Sogno Due, or Dream Two, in the near future and is considering adding Champagne to the range.

Update(27th Feb 2006):
Sogno Uno will be available soon at a pice of $38/bottle.
“Sogno Uno will be introduced this week in Manhattan.”
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This is about the wine maker;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2070059,00.html

The Sunday Times - World



The Sunday Times March 05, 2006


Mmm...full bodied, almost X-rated
Tony Allen-Mills, New York



AN ITALIAN wine maker who worked for the late Pope John Paul II has found a new patron — an American porn queen whose best-known films are Big Blowout, Fetish Underground and Poke Her.
Roberto Cipresso, one of Italy’s most respected wine makers, has startled the oenological world by going into business with Savanna Samson, a curvaceous New York blonde whose last film earned her the porn industry’s highest award for best all-girl sex scene.



The improbable collaboration between the X-film actress and the former papal vintner has produced a big surprise: a highly acclaimed Italian red wine that has been described as earthy, luscious and full-bodied — and that’s just Samson’s picture on the label.

Samson has emerged as a sophisticated taster who chose a complex blend of rare Italian grapes for her Sogno Uno (Dream One) wine, which was released in New York last week.

Initial suspicion in the wine world that Samson’s label was just a celebrity publicity stunt dissolved when Robert Parker, the American wine guru, rated her effort at 91 points out of 100 — denoting “an outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character”.

Parker later insisted that he had not been swayed by the bottle’s label, which shows Samson wearing only a see-through negligee. When he met her at a pre-launch party last November, he said he was impressed with her “good palate”, even though her dress was “provocative”.

“Trust me, I didn’t add any points for Ms Samson’s personal presentation,” Parker added.

Samson, whose real name is Natalie Oliveros, was introduced to Cipresso by her husband, Daniel Oliveros, a Manhattan wine merchant who met her when she was a dancer at Scores, a popular strip club. She has described her husband as a “very strange breed” who does not get jealous at her antics in front of the camera.

Like many New York strippers, Samson had moved to the city as a teenager in the hope of becoming a serious dancer. When she found she was not good enough, she abandoned ballet for lap dancing, then made her first adult film.

Porn stardom followed, and Samson’s career reached its zenith in January when her performance in a remake of a 1973 porn “classic”, The Devil in Miss Jones, earned her the best actress award in the porn industry’s equivalent of the Oscars.

Unbeknown to many of the studs who pleasured her on screen, Samson said she had suffered what amounted to an existential crisis last year while on holiday in Tuscany. “How can I leave a mark on this world?” she mused to The New York Times. “And I thought ‘wine’.”

Determined to create her own wine, she approached Cipresso, who is best known for the high quality red brunello wines he produces in Italy’s Montalcino region. He is also part owner of a vineyard in Argentina and in November 2000 produced a special cuvée for the pope to mark the papal jubilee.

Cipresso provided different blends of grape varieties from Italian vineyards for Samson to taste. She rejected merlot and cabernet strains, and eventually settled on a rare mix of Lazio cesanese grapes and Tuscan montepulciano. Samson then decided the blend was not quite sweet enough, so Cipresso added a small amount of the sangiovese grapes used in chianti.

Sogno Uno is selling for $38 a bottle at New York wine dealers and up to $70 in restaurants.

When news of the venture leaked out in trade reports last year, many wine merchants assumed that Samson and her husband were exploiting her notoriety to produce another bottle of celebrity plonk.