There is a well-worn joke in the drinks trade that a celebrity name on a bottle is a flavour all of its own, and rarely the best one in the blend. For two decades the famous-founder playbook ran almost entirely through alcohol: tequila, gin, prosecco, the occasional vanity vineyard. In 2026 the script flipped. The most talked-about celebrity drinks launches of the year are pointedly missing the alcohol, and that is not a coincidence. It is where the growth is.
The reasoning is simple. Traditional alcohol volumes are flat to falling across most mature markets, while the no-alcohol category keeps compounding. The drinks-data firm IWSR forecasts the US no-alcohol segment alone to approach 5 billion dollars by 2028, growing at roughly an 18 percent volume rate per year from 2024. A famous face who happens to be sober, or sober-curious, brings an authentic story, instant shelf space and a media megaphone, which is precisely what a young, fast-growing category rewards. The question for anyone actually buying these drinks is the one the marketing never answers: once you get past the name, is the liquid any good?
The quick answer
Celebrity backing tells you nothing reliable about what is in the glass. The 2026 launches worth your attention share three traits that have nothing to do with fame: a founder who is genuinely invested in not drinking, a credible production or distribution partner doing the real work, and a clear idea of what the drink is for. By that test, Elton John Zero and George Clooney's Crazy Mountain are the two serious arrivals of the year, both built with heavyweight industry partners and a real point of view. The wider field, from Lewis Hamilton's agave spirit to the established adaptogen and soda brands fronted by other stars, ranges from genuinely good to pleasant-but-forgettable. The rule of thumb is unchanged: judge the drink, not the dust jacket.
Elton John Zero: a 0% Blanc de Blancs with a real method
The headline launch of early 2026 was Elton John Zero Blanc de Blancs, an alcohol-free sparkling wine that arrived in the UK in January at around 10 pounds a bottle. The name is a deliberate signal: blanc de blancs means a sparkling wine made entirely from Chardonnay, and the product positions itself squarely as a celebratory alternative to Champagne rather than a generic fizzy grape drink.
What makes it more than a vanity project is the method. The grapes come from northern Italy, and the wine is crafted in Germany, which has quietly become the centre of gravity for high-quality no-alcohol wine. Crucially, it is not a normal-strength wine that has had its alcohol stripped out afterwards. Instead it is built as a 0% wine from the outset, fermenting the grape must with bacteria that simply do not produce alcohol, then adding green tea extract to supply the fine tannin that wine drinkers miss in zero-proof bottles, before gentle CO2 saturation gives it the bubble. That is a thoughtful answer to the two things alcohol-free wine usually gets wrong: thin texture and a missing backbone.
There is genuine personal logic behind it too. Elton John gave up alcohol in the 1990s and, by the account of David Furnish, wanted a celebratory drink they could actually raise at their own table and offer to abstaining guests. Distribution sits with Paul Schaafsma's Benchmark Drinks, a serious operator in the celebrity-wine world, which matters more than the signature on the label: it is the difference between a one-season curiosity and a product that stays on shelves. The verdict: this is one of the launches where the famous name bought attention, and the drink behind it is built to keep it.
George Clooney's Crazy Mountain: the Casamigos team does it again, sober
If Elton John took the wine lane, George Clooney took the beer one. In March 2026 he reunited with his Casamigos co-founders, Rande Gerber and Mike Meldman, to launch Crazy Mountain, a non-alcoholic beer. The backstory is the whole pitch: this is the same trio that built Casamigos tequila from a private joke into a brand they sold to Diageo in 2017 for about 1 billion dollars. They have done the from-zero-to-acquisition journey once, in spirits, and are now betting their reputation on the opposite of spirits.
Crazy Mountain is a 65-calorie alcohol-free beer, launching in classic lager and a lime variant. The technical choice worth noting is that the beer is brewed to be alcohol-free rather than fermented to full strength and then dealcoholized, which the founders argue preserves the integrity of the flavour from start to finish. That is a defensible position, though both routes can produce excellent beer in 2026; what it really signals is that they care about the process, not just the can art. The rollout began in select US markets, including California, Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois, alongside non-alcohol strongholds such as the Pacific Northwest, with national expansion to follow. The verdict: a credible, well-resourced entry from people who have built a billion-dollar drinks brand before, aimed squarely at the cold-one ritual rather than the wellness aisle.
The wider field: from agave spirits to sodas
Beyond the two big 2026 arrivals sits a deeper bench of celebrity zero-proof brands, several of which predate this year and have had time to prove themselves. Lewis Hamilton co-founded Almave, a super-premium non-alcoholic blue agave spirit made in Jalisco, Mexico, from the same raw material as tequila but stopping short of the fermentation that creates alcohol; it launched in 2023 and drew an investment from Pernod Ricard in 2024, a meaningful signal of industry confidence. Bella Hadid co-founded Kin Euphorics back in 2018, leaning on nootropics and adaptogens rather than mimicking a specific drink. Blake Lively's Betty Buzz, from 2021, is a line of clean-label sparkling mixers and sodas rather than an alcohol substitute. Katy Perry co-founded the apéritif brand De Soi with master distiller Morgan McLachlan. The pattern across all of them is instructive: the ones that endure are run as real businesses with operating partners, not as a name rented out for a season.
The 2026 celebrity zero-proof scorecard
The table below lines up the notable names against what actually matters: the category, the founder's real involvement, the serious partner doing the work, and the honest read on whether it is worth seeking out.
| Brand | Celebrity | Category | Launch | The honest read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elton John Zero (Blanc de Blancs) | Elton John | 0% sparkling wine, Chardonnay base | Jan 2026, UK | Serious method, built 0% from scratch with German production and Benchmark distribution. Worth trying. |
| Crazy Mountain | George Clooney, Rande Gerber, Mike Meldman | NA beer, lager and lime, 65 cal | Mar 2026, US | The Casamigos team going sober; brewed alcohol-free, well funded. Credible. |
| Almave | Lewis Hamilton | NA blue agave spirit | 2023, Pernod Ricard stake 2024 | Built for the agave-spirit ritual; big-house backing is a real vote of confidence. |
| Kin Euphorics | Bella Hadid | Functional, nootropics/adaptogens | 2018 | A mood drink, not an alcohol clone; judge it as functional, not as a cocktail. |
| Betty Buzz | Blake Lively | Sparkling mixers and sodas | 2021 | Clean-label sodas; lovely as mixers, not pretending to replace a drink. |
| De Soi | Katy Perry | NA apéritif | 2022 | Apéritif format with a real distiller; better as a ritual than a wine swap. |
Read down that last column and the lesson is consistent. The category label matters more than the celebrity: an alcohol-free apéritif is not trying to be a wine, a functional adaptogen drink is not trying to be a beer, and judging each against the right benchmark is how you avoid disappointment. The famous name is a flashlight that points you at the bottle; it is not a guarantee of what is inside.
How to read a celebrity bottle without being sold to
If you want a quick filter the next time a famous face stares back at you from the chiller, three questions do most of the work. First, is the founder actually sober or seriously sober-curious, or is this a licensing deal? Personal stake tends to track with patience and quality. Second, who is the operating or distribution partner, and do they know how to make or move drinks at scale? A heavyweight partner like Benchmark Drinks or a strategic investor like Pernod Ricard is doing the unglamorous work that decides whether the liquid is good. Third, is the drink honest about what it is, a beer, a sparkling wine, an apéritif, a functional drink, or is it hiding behind vibes? The clearer the answer to all three, the better the odds that the pour lives up to the poster.
The bigger picture is that 2026 marks a genuine shift. The famous-founder energy that spent twenty years building tequilas and gins has turned decisively toward zero-proof, and that brings real money, real distribution and real scrutiny into a category that needed all three. The hype is loud, but underneath it the good news is simple: more of these drinks are worth drinking than ever before. You just have to read past the name to find them.
For a structured, definition-first reference on non-alcoholic wine, beer, spirits and the wider zero-proof world, zeroproof.one is the independent European knowledge base. The Glossary defines the terms behind the labels, from blanc de blancs to dealcoholization, the FAQ unpacks how these drinks are really made, and the Drink Matcher helps you find a zero-proof bottle worth opening, with or without a famous name on it.