Seeing a gap in the market for a female-focused wine, TWE and Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine teamed up to introduce a new wine brand to US and Australian audiences. The red, white, and sparkling results are just as sunny as you might imagine.
Reese Witherspoon founded women-centred community Hello Sunshine in 2016 and sold it five years later for more than $1 billion. The company’s first success was ‘Reese’s Book Club,’ which enabled Witherspoon and her co-founder, Australian-born Sarah Harden, to get a grassroots feel for the stories women wanted to hear. Accordingly, Hello Sunshine evolved into a Hollywood content platform wholly committed to female-narrative storytelling.
Having nailed serving up visual content curated to the tastes of women, Hello Sunshine is now expanding into other verticals. In this 2025 chapter of the Hello Sunshine story, the organisation is rolling out another book club staple: wine. It is partnering again with a born-and-bred Australian success story, to bring the red, white, and sparkling wines to fruition.
“Over 70% of women are making wine decisions, yet less than 3% of brands are intentionally speaking to women,” Sarah Bakx, President of Bold Brands at Treasury Americas, tells Forbes Australia.
Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) is headquartered in Melbourne, listed on the ASX and has a current market capitalisation of more than $8 billion. It is now rolling out the new Drop of Sunshine brand in Australia and the USA.
“The need is clear,” says US-based Bakx. “There has been a disconnect between demand from women and the supply available. We have created a wine that can become the medium to tell the stories of women around the globe.”
Getting Drop of Sunshine off the ground has taken the strong will of Bakx and two other female executives. Each of them has played a distinct role in the development of the wine, and they are all named Sarah.
“We don’t know how to make wine, but we do know women, we know our community,” says Sarah Harden, Hello Sunshine’s co-founder and CEO, who grew up in Geelong. “This is a big initiative for Treasury; having their trust is a big deal. And it’s a big initiative for us.”
Harden studied at the University of Melbourne before signing on as a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. In 1997, she relocated to the US to attend Harvard Business School. After graduating, Harden worked with News Corporation in LA, followed by The Chernin Group and Otter Media, where she met Witherspoon. The two women had an immediate connection and desire to tell female-led stories. In 2017, Harden became CEO of the company they founded together.
Witherspoon leveraged her Instagram account to share book recommendations and engage in discussions with women about the stories they wanted to hear. Reese’s book club was a digital storytelling community, connecting people worldwide to analyse literature.
“If you think about the history of book clubs, they are intimacy at scale,” says Harden. “You invite random strangers into your home to convene and connect around storytelling.”
A common element of in-person book clubs is breaking bread together and sharing food and wine as part of the experience. Harden says the pandemic brought home just how powerful communing together is.
“Post-Covid, we started to do a lot of experiential events gathering and convening women,” says Harden. Bringing people together in person led to the idea of having a Hello Sunshine-inspired wine that could be shared in-person, and connect the Hello Sunshine audience together when they get together digitally.
Harden knew just who to reach out to discuss the concept.
“Everyone knows Treasury, but especially as an Australian, I knew about what they do,” says Harden. She set up an initial conversation with the company.
“It was one of those great meetings where you walk in and it was a room of mostly women. We got talking about the analogies between authorship in storytelling and authorship in winemaking – the conditions, the terroir, the grapes. We were very aligned.”
From concept to vine to the glass
In Sarah Bakx, Harden found a fellow executive deeply committed to telling the stories of women.
“Being in the wine business for 25 years, I had grown up telling these amazingly romantic stories about men and their legacies in the wine business,” says Bakx. “And along the way, I met profound women whose stories were never told.”
Bakx grew up in Philadelphia and has deep experience in the beverage industry, working with Constellation Brands and Fiji Water. She joined Treasury in 2020.
“Over 70% of women are making wine decisions, yet less than 3% of brands are intentionally speaking to women.”
Sarah Bakx, President of Bold Brands, Treasury Americas
“Not telling the stories of women was a clear gap that I saw early on in each company I worked at. We would discuss it and nothing would get done,” says Bakx. “It was such a breath of fresh air to come to Treasury and have leadership so supportive of the idea.”
The perfect opportunity soon presented itself.
“When we began, we had no idea we would end up with the partnership with Hello Sunshine. I think that just amplified our passion. Once we met that team and we really dug into the amazing platform that they had built, it was like a marriage made in heaven,” says Bakx.
Positioning the brand for Australian consumption
While Witherspoon may be a household name in Australia, Hello Sunshine is less well-known. The shows it has produced – Emmy-award winning streaming series Morning Wars (The Morning Show for US readers), featuring both Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, and Big Little Lies, starring Nicole Kidman – have entered living rooms across the globe.
In another Australian crossover, the Big Little Lies series is based on Australian-author Liane Mortiarty’s New York Times best-selling book, set in Sydney’s affluent northern beaches. Hello Sunshine also created screen adaptations of best-selling books Gone Girl, Daisy Jones and the Six, and Where the Crawdads Sing.
The content that Hello Sunshine tackles is often intense, but the positioning of the brand itself is much more lighthearted, as evidenced by the name.
“There’s an optimism, a looking forward, and an openness, and that’s us as a brand,” says Harden. “Welcome in. That to me, speaks to Drop of Sunshine. You’re going to get something joyful and good and no stress.”
Witherspoon’s sunny disposition and active social media presence is a drawcard for Drop of Sunshine in the ANZ market, agrees Sarah Parkes, the head of Sales of Marketing for Treasury Premium Brands.
There are currently 3 wines available for purchase in Dan Murphys, First Choice and Liquorland, Parkes says. The pinot grigio and sauvignon blanc are sourced from New Zealand; and the Prosecco from Australia. A shiraz and cabernet sauvignon will be available on our shores soon.
In the US, a Central Coast sparkling rose, chardonnay and red blend will be available over the coming months in Kroger, Ralphs, and Albertsons supermarkets as well as retailers Bevmo and Total Wine & More.
The wines are priced in the $20 range, Parkes says, and have been in development for more than two years.
The Hello Sunshine legacy
Building a company that connects with consumers authentically and effectively takes time, all three Sarah’s acknowledge.
“When Reece and I started the company eight years ago, we set out to build a brand that had meaning, whether that’s content, or a social post or now wine,” says Harden.
Innovating the tried and tested Hollywood model to more accurately reflect the zeitgeist paid off for the duo, and has earned them commercial success and critical acclaim. TWE is now heavily invested in Drop of Sunshine and hoping for a similar outcome.
“We did surveys, online panels, and then live in-person consumer panels,” says Bakx. “We discovered that women look at wine as a way to connect. When they sit down with a girlfriend, during a happy or sad occasion, wine was there. It is a catalyst to share both small and profound moments in their lives.”
Moving forward, the characters in the films and television series that Hello Sunshine produces may share their lives with Drop of Sunshine, too.
“You might soon turn on a show and see the wine in the background,” says Harden.
The final product is something she is proud of and drinks herself, noting that the sparkling wine is a favourite amongst the Hello Sunshine employees, and her friends and family.
“This is a quality product for a very reasonable price point. There are no velvet VIP ropes – what we make is for everyone.”
