Good news first: Pearl Jam have their own signature wine called “Home X Away.” Now the bad news: the whole first run sold out in 12 minutes. According to Food and Wine, the boxes of four band-sanctioned vinos were produced by the PJ fanatics Mark McNeilly of Mark Ryan Winery and Trey Busch of Sleight of Hand Cellars — known as the Underground Wine Project — with profits earmarked for the group’s Vitalogy Foundation charity.
Each of the 450 limited-edition sets came with four bottles of the Project’s Idle Hands wine, with each bottle featuring a different label designed by PJ’s art crew depicting the skyline of one of the cities (Seattle, Missoula, Chicago, Boston) the band is visiting on its “Home X Away” tour. The $150 boxes raised $67,500 for the non-profit Foundation, which works on issues including community health, the environment, arts & education and social change. The wines are described as having “layers of ripe cherries and black plums, some tobacco, toasty mocha notes and graphite characters,” pairing well with such PJ songs as “Corduroy.”
Pearl Jam’s wine sold out before most people even heard about it: https://t.co/4SpKkc6yEz pic.twitter.com/63lJhmOztq
— Food & Wine (@foodandwine) July 30, 2018
The pairing makes sense, since McNeilly has named several of his wines after PJ songs (“The Dissident,” “Crazy Mary”) and Busch’s winery is named after the 11th track on the band’s 2000 album Binaural.
“Trey and I have met [Pearl Jam] band members over the years at different things, and we have worked with them a little bit with some of their charities, but it’s just fun to be pulled in a little bit closer for a great cause,” McNeilly told Wine Spectator. “I think that if we can work with Pearl Jam and find some new arenas to talk about philanthropy and talk about people’s responsibilities toward charity, you can kind of open people’s eyes and let them know everybody has a responsibility to help everybody else.”
The Walla Walla Union-Bulletin reports that another 50 cases of the red blend — 90 percent Syrah and 10 percent Cabernet Sauvignon — will be available at Seattle’s Ethan Stowell Restaurants and sold on Aug. 8 during PJ’s run of hometown shows.