Metaphorically speaking, Dolly Parton turned water into wine.
The 11-time Grammy-winning country artist and songwriter, who died on Tuesday, August 25, after a brief illness, performed miracles everywhere her peep toe heels and rhinestone-embellished cowboy boots took her.
Listing her humanitarian efforts would take longer than her discography, but we would be remiss not to mention The Dollywood Foundation, which provides annual scholarships to high school seniors in Sevier County, Tennessee, or its Imagination Library program, which has gifted over 330 million books to children across five countries since 1995. (The Library of Congress even deemed Parton a “titan of children’s literacy.”)
Parton personally donated $1 million to Hurricane Helene recovery efforts in 2024, which was then matched by her East Tennessee businesses. She also notably donated $1 million to Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University’s coronavirus vaccine research in April 2020, which led to the development of the Moderna Covid vaccine.
This hardly scratches the surface of the cultural icon’s philanthropic efforts, as her metaphorical wine was ever-flowing from her generous heart. But Parton also turned grapes into wine.
In July 2024, the “Jolene” singer launched her first line of wines, Dolly Wines, in collaboration with Parton Family Cellars and wine giant Accolade Wines (renamed Vinarchy after its 2025 merger with Pernod Ricard Winemakers). Described as “easy-drinking, light-hearted and vibrant,” Dolly Wines offers a Pinot Noir and a Chardonnay in the U.S. (U.K. wine lovers are offered a Prosecco and a rosé), the latter earning an impressive 93 points from Wine Enthusiast Writer-at-Large Tonya Pitts.
Pitts praised the wine’s white peach, melon, and blood orange aromas, as well as flavors of Golden Delicious apple, grapefruit, ginger, and green tea—though Parton may not have been able to detect such precise notes herself, as an admitted wine novice. Her unconventional contribution to the wine industry is part of what makes it so charming—and accessible.
Dolly Parton’s Relationship With Wine Embodied Togetherness, Not Snobbery
Despite writing lyrics like “And do you all recall the time we all got drunk on homemade wine? That was in the better part of life we've left behind,” Parton wasn’t exactly a wine connoisseur.
“I always like to test everything that I’m involved with, and they do bring the wine for me to taste. But I try to leave those kinds of things to the experts,” Parton said in a 2024 Wine Spectator interview when asked about her level of involvement. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to make a good wine or be able to say for certain if it’s this or that,” she continued, making it crystal clear she was neither an authority in viniculture nor did she wish to be the next serious celebrity winemaker, akin to someone like the late Sam Neill.
Like many aspects of Parton’s life and career, her foray into the wine business was about people. “My wine is for the regular people out there who like to have a good time, people who love together, who get together with friends and family,” she explained, noting that “it isn’t necessarily for somebody so highfalutin who knows this and that and has a bottle that’s 200 years old.”
Of course, Parton clarified that there’s no harm in hoping collectors try her wine, but she created a line of palatable, affordable bottles with the everyman in mind.
It’s not outlandish to say ordering a glass at a winery, restaurant, or wine bar can be daunting for a casual wine drinker, who may not have “tannin” or “tertiary aroma” in their vocabulary.
According to a 2018 study, 30% of Americans are frustrated by lengthy wine menus and 19% are intimidated by sommeliers. Similarly, 2022 research found that three in four people are intimidated by the “rules of wine.” Considering Parton insisted her brand is for “anybody who likes to drink wine,” Dolly Wines repels these kinds of stats.
This dedication to the notion that wine is for everyone is reiterated on the Dolly Wines site, which states that the brand “[draws] from her legendary career in music and her unwavering spirit of inclusivity.”
Dolly Parton’s Appalachian Mountain Childhood Saw Homemade Wine and Moonshine
Parton’s kinship with wine was simultaneously lax and deep-rooted, as her first memories of wine go back to her childhood in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, right outside of Sevierville. One of 12 kids, she grew up in a one-bedroom cabin (which lacked electricity and running water) in the Great Smoky Mountains, the perfect environment for her family’s homemade wine and moonshine.
Made by distilling corn mash in the Smokies, her father’s special moonshine was a sore subject in the Parton household, as her rigid Christian mother didn’t approve of it, despite it helping pay the bills. Appearing on her seventh studio album, Joshua, her song "Daddy's Moonshine Still" touches on this, as does her 2020 book Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics.
“He didn’t really want to do it, but people make moonshine in the mountains because they need the income. So Daddy did that for a time, and so did a lot of my relatives,” she wrote of her farmer father.
Illegal during the Prohibition era, making wine and moonshine is deeply ingrained in Appalachian history as an economic necessity, supported by higher altitudes, well-draining soil, and isolation.
Regarding wine specifically, farmers started growing grapes in the region circa the 18th and 19th centuries, as per Tennessee Homemade Wines. Parton even mentions “all them possum grapes and muscadines” in her 1973 tune “The Better Part of Life.”
Parton was quite candid about not being much of a drinker herself, as she viewed wine as a catalyst for beautiful memories more than anything. Still, her family’s Appalachian survivalist ties to alcoholic beverage production and her warm honesty about a lack of formal wine education made her an unlikely celebrity wine icon for the people.
As for what will happen to Dolly Wines now that Dolly is gone, it’s hard to say, but considering Sam Neill’s Two Paddocks wine sales boomed directly following his death earlier this summer (Liquorland New Zealand reported a 1,828% increase in brand sales within just a few days of the news), posthumous consumer interest is promising.
To pour one out for Dolly Parton is to pour one out for an American treasure, and it may as well be from a bottle adorned with butterflies.