“I find [wine] blending such a fascinating process. It’s one of my favourite days of the year.”
Which considering an average day in the life of Graham Norton could be interviewing Madonna, or helping to bring Eurovision into our homes is quite the statement.
But Norton’s love of wine has gone way beyond guzzling through a couple of glasses on his phenomenally successful BBC chat show - which is now syndicated as far and wide as Nepal and the Maldives. He can arguably claim to be one of the first major so-called celebrity brands to really make it big, not just in the UK, but crucially around the world - his wines are now sold in some 43 countries.
Graham Norton helping to blend the latest vintage of GN Sauvignon Blanc - the thirteenth - with his winemaking partners Rob Cameron, left, and Tim Lighbourne of Invivo Wines in New Zealand
The 2026 release of the GN wines - which for the first time includes the alcohol-free GN Zero Sauvignon Blanc and GN Spicy Jalapeño Sauvignon Blanc - marks what will be the thirteenth vintage when they are released in the UK and Ireland in September.
What’s particularly impressive about the GN range is that they might have been in the market for 13 years, but it is only now enjoying its biggest sales success - the Graham Norton Sauvignon Blanc, for example, was the fastest-growing brand in the UK Sauvignon Blanc category in 2024, with sales up 396% year on year, according to its producers Invivo Wines. A glass of GN wine is now said to be enjoyed every two seconds in the UK. The GN brand has been in the Top 20 list of wine brands in Ireland for the last five years.
It is actually thanks to its international appeal that Norton first came to the attention of a couple of New Zealander wine entrepreneurs - Tim Lightbourne and Rob Cameron - who were looking at new ways to differentiate their wine business, Invivo Wines from everything else coming out of New Zealand.
“Invivo has never been about doing things the usual way,” says Cameron. “We knew that to break through internationally, we needed more than just great grapes. We needed personality and purpose. Graham brought that.”
That was way back in 2011 when the duo cheekily sent 12 bottles to Graham Norton’s chat show office and suggested he shared them with his guests. Three years later Lightbourne and Cameron were able to meet Norton when they went to a recording of his show and asked if he would like to make a wine together.
Three’s company
The three of them clearly hit it off from the start and Norton recognised these were not just two average wine buys, but people he could have a lot of fun with too.
He even infamously stood in a barrel on the set of his TV show and crushed Sauvignon Blanc grapes that had been smuggled from New Zealand by Lightbourne into the UK.
They have all come a long way since then. Over the years the range has been expanded to seven wines and now includes: GN Zero Sauvignon Blanc; GN New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc; GN South African Sauvignon Blanc; GN Prosecco DOC; GN Rosé Prosecco DOC; GN Shiraz from Australia; and GN He-Devil Malbec from Argentina.
They were able to sit down and reflect on a 15-year working relationship at a press event last month in London - hosted by wine consultant and writer, Libby Brodie, who, as she said, had the unenviable cast of interviewing arguably one of the world’s famous interviewers. It was clear from the informal chat just how much fun goes into what they do.
Graham Norton and the launch of his 2026 wines with Invivo Wines' Tim Lightbourne and Rob Cameron hosted superbly by Libby Brodie
Norton was able to share just why he is so invested - literally - in the GN wine story. He became a shareholder in 2015.
The yearly blending sessions have usually taken place in London with Cameron and Lightbourne bringing over test tubes of potential component samples of Sauvignon Blanc for them to mix and match and see what they come up with.
As Norton says: “I find the blending such a fascinating process and how one tiny change in a sample can change the taste in the glass. It’s one of my favourite days of the year.”
It’s also a challenge to make sure that whatever the vintage variation there might be in the grapes the final blend is as close as they can get to what the GN wine customers wants.
“It needs to test the way that people expect it to. We have to create a consistent wine,” he says.
They now, though, have a “short hand way of working” that makes the blending process a lot easier.
The bigger the brand gets, the bigger the pressure there is to get the blend right, stresses Cameron.
Blending and branding
Norton says that ultimately they are looking to create a style of wine that clearly he likes and wants to put his name to. Which in terms a “certain style” means a wine he jokingly says he can “drink a lot of”. Of all the wines in GN range it is the Sauvignon Blanc and the Malbec that he “drinks the most”.
He admits that when he was “drawn” to New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc it was the full on “zingy” style he liked, but over the years his palate has matured and he “has fallen out of love with them” and now prefers the less “New Worldly style” and he wants to make a Sauvignon Blanc you can “enjoy at any occasion”.
Of the two new wines in the range Cameron says the alcohol-free Sauvignon Blanc has been made to ensure the “varietal typicity” and acidity is still very much there in the glass. The jalapeño style is something he has been working on for a while - and taps into the jalapeño Sauvignon Blanc TikTok trend that started in the US - and includes using frozen jalapeño in the Sauvignon Blanc blend to create more of a “tropical stye”.
Graham Norton was able to visit Invivo Wines and see the vineyards and meet some of the growers on his first visit to Marlborough in 2025
Even though they have been making wine tougher for years it was only in 2025 when Norton visited Awatere Valley in Marlborough to see the vineyards and meet the Invivo growers for the first time. He was even given a ‘Grape Ambassador Award’ from the New Zealand Prime Minister and Mayor of Marlborough for his troubles.
He admits it “opened his eyes” to the whole winemaking process that he was not expecting. It made him realise he had been somewhat “disconnected” from where the wine is from and to meet the growers and feel their passion for what they do “brought it home” to him. He also fully appreciated just how many people are involved in making an average bottle of GN wine. From the growers, the viticulturists, the grape pickers, the cellar hands.
Or as Norton put it: “From the ground to the supermarket.”
As for his own journey into wine he admits it was not until he went to university and starting working as a waiter in restaurants that he ever took wine seriously, or was “on his radar”. In fact growing up alcohol was not something his family had around the dinner table, even though his dad worked for Guinness.
Invivo success
The success that Invivo Wines has had with GN Wines has not come by chance, or simply picking the right global chat show host to work with. The foundations for that success were laid down in the years before Graham Norton came along. In fact they stretch back to when they first met in the same class as teenagers at high school.
Whilst Lightbourne went on to enjoy a career working in FMCG and on major brands such as HJ Heinz and L’Oreal, Cameron trained as a winemaker and worked for a number of producers around the world.
When they decided to combine their skills and start Invivo Wines they did so with the intention of disrupting what they thought was a very safe and pretty dull wine market at the time.
Invivo Wines have always looked to promote themselves and their wines using disruptive marketing
As Lightbourne told The Buyer in an interview in 2018:“We did not follow the classic way of starting up a wine company, which is namely to make some wine and then try and sell it. Instead we looked at the market and then engineered a business around what styles and types of wine that people would like to buy.”
One of its early marketing stunts included running a major campaign that said: “For a complex oak nose, try Pinocchio. For a superb Pinot, try Invivo.”
“That said we take the wine we make very seriously indeed,” stressed Cameron.
It’s an approach that clearly works perfectly with Graham Norton and how they have been able to work together.
Another level
Graham Norton's wines have now sold over 20m bottles around the world over the last 14 years
The business was able to go to another level in 2015 when it embarked on a major crowdfunding campaign, the first of its type in the southern hemisphere, which released 20% of the business to some 650+ investors and helped raise the maximum a New Zealand business could achieve - some NZ$2m in a matter of days.
A campaign that helped take it from NZ$5m turnover in 2015 to close to NZ$25m in 2025. It now sells 400,000 x 9 litre cases of wine annually and is now exported to 43 countries.
It’s now set, in its own words, to “supercharge its global expansion” thanks to a “strategic investment” from Indevin, New Zealand’s largest producer and owners of Villa Maria, which also now has a place on its board for its chief executive, Simon Limmer.
“This is a game-changing partnership for us,” says Lightbourne. “We’ve always done things our way, and now we’re joining forces with the best in New Zealand.”
At a stroke it gives Invivo access to Indevin’s huge inventory of grapes sourced from vineyards across New Zealand and will allow it to put the foot down in terms of volume growth and scaleability.
It has come at the right time too. Invivo’s overall branded wines increased in sales by 15% in 2024 with US sales up by 117%, along with 124% increase in depletions. In the UK and Ireland its sales were up 106% versus a 12.5% decline in overall New Zealand sales.
It’s not just Graham Norton’s wines that are flying off the international shelves but Invivo also has a long-standing winemaking partnership with US actress, Sarah Jessica-Parker, which has distribution across 42 US states and 25 countries.
The Invivo approach of what they call the “destuffication of wine”- with Graham Norton at the helm - is clearly working, right around the world.
* You can find out more about GN Wines and Invivo Wines here.
