Roger Taylor launches Queen rosé wine, available in UK May 5

Roger Taylor has taken the Queen name into a new lane, and this one comes bottled. The Queen drummer’s Queen Côtes de Provence Rosé Cuvée Rock n’ Roll 2025 is due in the UK on May 5, a launch that says as much about legacy branding as it does about wine.

Taylor unveiled the project at the Covent Garden Hotel in London on April 22, with Paul Whitehouse interviewing him on stage. The line-up around him was unusually serious for a celebrity side venture: Sony Music, Watermill Wines, Rupert Clevely, and Les Caves du Commandeur all had skin in the game. Clevely, a former UK managing director of Veuve Clicquot and former chief executive of Geronimo Inns, gave the rollout more commercial weight than a one-off vanity bottle.

The wine itself is a proper blend, not a novelty label. It is made from 70 percent Grenache and 30 percent Cinsault, produced in collaboration with Les Caves du Commandeur in Côtes de Provence. The cooperative has been making wine in Provence since 1913, brings together 60 growers, and is based in Montfort-sur-Argens, with vineyards spread across nine communes in Var. More than 90 percent of those vineyards are certified organic or High Environmental Value, which gives Taylor’s “real integrity” line some genuine backing.

That matters, because drummer-branded products can land either as clever extensions of the artist’s world or as obvious cash-ins. Taylor pushed this one toward the first category. He said the project was about “real integrity” and paired that with “a sense of joy that brings people together,” while also calling himself a “life-long lover” of wine. He said the rosé should be “served cold” and aimed to keep it at £18, pitched below Whispering Angel, the benchmark label it is clearly trying to undercut.

Retail detail has already sharpened the picture. Waitrose listed the bottle at £18.50 and described it as suitable for vegans, which places it squarely in the accessible premium bracket rather than the ultra-luxury lane many celebrity launches choose. For Queen fans, that is the telling part: Taylor is not just selling a souvenir. He is using rock credibility to move a product with enough structure, price discipline, and producer pedigree to stand on its own.

Taylor has always carried a recognizable public identity beyond the kit, but this launch shows how a famous drummer can still leverage that identity without disappearing entirely into nostalgia. Queen’s name remains the hook, yet the real test is whether the brand feels like part of the legacy or just a glossy label on Provence wine.