Ciccone Vineyards by Madonna (allegedly, maybe, sort of)
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I am writing this on Tuesday, the day Madonna announced her upcoming world tour with songs from over the decades. The video announcing the show is insane, featuring the likes of Jack Black, Amy Schumer, Lil Wayne, Judd Apatow, Meg Stalter, Kate Berlant, Bob the Drag Queen and Diplo all sitting around a table playing truth or dare (get it?). Who is this damn Hundred Acre Woods of minor celebrities? No one gets it. But she’ll be doing this until she is just a head in a jar. And it only works because, to borrow a phrase, bitch, it’s Madonna.
Which is what makes the most famous pop star in the world’s father owning a random winery in northwest Michigan so bizarre.
Ciccone Vineyard and Winery, established in 1995, is run by Silvio Ciccone (Madonna’s father) and his wife Joan (Madonna’s mother-in-law) with Madonna's half-siblings Mario and Paula acting as vineyard manager and winemaker.
This was, for context, around the time Madonna starred in Evita: perhaps the terroir of Madonna’s convincing Argentinian flair helped Silvio’s grapes survive that first Michigan winter.
Ciccone Vineyards is located in the Suttons Bay AVA, a small wine region in the Leelenau peninsula of northwest Michigan, anchored on the vacation town of Traverse City. Sandwiched along Lake Michigan, amid rolling hills and vineyards, Traverse City is a town you could definitely get a pamphlet about.
Ciccone Vineyards is the Isla Bonita of the upper Great Lakes region (excluding Canada and Wisconsin and maybe the Upper Peninsula). As Silvio said in 2014, “My family is from Italy, but I really look at this place as 'the Tuscany of Michigan' or 'the Napa of the Midwest.’” The Napa of the Midwest? Duluth, Minnesota is going to have something to say about this…
Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, never forget, is a good, tacky midwestern Italian. Her father Silvio, a former engineer in the car industry, raised his eight children around Suburban Detroit. As the Ciccone Vineyards website reads, “Silvio always had a couple rows of grapevines in the back yard carrying on his father’s tradition of making wine which he learned growing up in Pennsylvania.” So Silvio does not track his wine background to his deep Italian heritage, but to … Pennsylvania?
There’s something so bizarre about the most famous woman in the world’s father being so … I don’t know … pedestrian. It’s like if Tina Knowles lived in Sedona and made soap. His tasting room is an encapsulation of the essence of Tuscany-Upon-Saginaw: a wooden board on the mantle of the fireplace that says “Gather;” a sculptural cross affixed to the wall.
Pre, say, 2011, Yelp reviewers noted that Madonna posters adorned the tasting room, like the bedroom of a gay 7th grader in Skokie, Illinois in 1992. Employees had to field questions as to whether Madonna was in the back, putting together the local Michigan charcuterie boards. Silvio leaned into it: he even released a Madonna-themed Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in 2005.
But currently, there is just one reference to Madonna in the winery, a single photo in the tasting room of pop star and father, so airbrushed his face looks like a sheet of paper. As a friend of Silvio’s said, “He knows his stuff, he wants to make quality product. He is not about publicity.”
So what changed? Madonna and Silvio’s relationship has ebbed and flowed over the years. Part of Madonna’s ebb with her father is said to have started when he married Joan, the hot blonde with lowlights he’d hired to help with the kids after his wife, Madonna’s mother, died at 36 from breast cancer. “I hated my father for a long, long time,” she said in her 1999 book Madonna in Her Own Words.
Silvio has shot back too: in 2007, Silvio gave an interview with Billboard saying Confessions on a Dance Floor was the last album to make his “bussy” “drop.”
But in 2004, their relationship was so good that, according to some reports, Madonna sent Silvio $900,000 to save his ‘ailing’ vineyard. Per a source at the time, "Tony is a very proud man and didn't want to accept charity, so he made her a major shareholder in Ciccone Vineyard.”
“She was a little reluctant at the start but Guy [Ritchie] is a huge fan of the Pinot Noir — Tony has been sending them bottles for Christmas for years,” the source continued. ”He couldn't bear to be without it, so he convinced Madonna to put some money in.”
So Guy Ritchie saved the family farm! A regular Pa Ingalls.
But Silvio quickly refuted this. “The whole story is totally untrue,” he told Decanter shortly thereafter. Silvio, however, did admit that at the time he was broke. But that he made ends meet by himself. OK, he’s being so nepo dad here. I got here all on my own! he and Lily-Rose Depp say frothing at the mouth to anyone who will listen.
I don’t know where I land on this story. It’s unclear whether Madonna co-owns this winery. All I know is Guy Ritchie was definitely not guzzling down any Ciccone pinot noir.
But then again … maybe he was? Madonna/Madonna’s father wine was shockingly good. The Pinot Blanc was refreshing and delicate and not overly-juicy, with notes of fresh peach without being so juicy. It was a bit sweet, but had a level of finesse I was impressed by. The Cabernet Franc drank very light but had nice notes of leather and oak. These wines felt professional and sophisticated.
For all my Grand Rapids readers, make it a weekend and go check out that bleak, bleak tasting room!