vintner’s daughter
Vintner’s Daughter

Unpacking the Cult of Skincare Hit Vintner’s Daughter

Ten years later, the Gwyneth-approved brand manages to hold onto its mystique

“I can always tell, as soon as someone walks in the door, if that person has used Vintner’s Daughter the night before,” a salesclerk at a Toronto Detox Market told me nearly as soon as I had walked in the door. She continued, delighted with the accuracy of her own instincts, like a cat who can sense an earthquake, “I just know. They’re just glowing.” (The reverse, alas, is also true. She could evidently tell that I had not used the product; she was correct.) As she continued to speak, well, glowingly, she cupped a bottle of Vintner’s serum in the palm of her hand with protective reverence and delicacy, the way you might a baby bird or a nugget of actual gold. 

Vintner’s Daughter’s Active Botanical Serum was launched a decade ago by April Gargiulo, a Napa-raised daughter of vintners. (Both her parents were winemakers.) She crafted the product using 22 nutrient-dense botanicals, at some of the highest allowable percentages. The ingredient list, including carrot seed, hazelnut, primrose, frankincense, nettle and sea buckthorn, reads like a grocery list for a California woodsprite, the kind who would shop at Erewhon. (Just reading the list makes me want to drink kombucha and wear only caftans.) 

vintner’s daughter active botanical serum
Vintner’s Daughter Active Botanical Serum, $255, thedetoxmarket.ca Photo: Vintner’s Daughter

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Each bottle, Gargiulo tells me over the phone from San Francisco, takes three weeks to create, using a temperature-controlled extraction process to create the formula’s base, Photo Radiance Infusion. The resulting 100 per cent active, oil-soluble, multi-correctional formula is the shade of late afternoon sunshine filtering through the kind of California vineyards Gargiulo grew up amongst, each bottle distilling a bewitching goldenness. 

vintner’s daughter
Vintner’s Daughter founder April Gargiulo in her native Napa, California. Photo: Vintner’s Daughter

The slow-and-steady, whole-plant approach has proven the company’s scientific, business and philosophical credo. “I know that processed food doesn’t serve my body at the deepest level so why would it serve my largest organ, my skin?” Gargiulo says, “Imagine giving your body a meal-replacement bar made with synthetics in a lab versus giving your body whole food made with whole plants. We know that these whole foods will be able to communicate with your body at a much deeper level to bring about balance, health, resilience, strength. It’s the same with our skin.” she says. 

But for a company all about slowness, the serum fast became cult. Tracy Ellis Ross became its unofficial brand ambassador. Into the Gloss almost instantly declared it: “The oil to end all face oils.” Sally Holmes, elle.com’s executive editor, said Vintner’s inspired her to quit eyeliner because of how awake and rested it made her look. And Gwyneth Paltrow is forever listing it as one of her favourite skincare products (along with her own). 

vintner’s daughter active treatment essence
Vintner’s Daughter Active Treatment Essence, $310, thedetoxmarket.ca Photo: The Detox Market

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Despite its fast success, Vintner’s bided its time, waiting till 2019 before releasing its second product, the Active Treatment Essence. And this past winter, after four years of research, in honour of the company’s 10th anniversary, Vintner’s released its third product, the Active Renewal Cleanser (containing the brand’s proprietary Photo Radiance Infusion). It’s a two-in-one cleanser, meaning it combines an oil-soluble infusion with a water-soluble infusion to get the results of a double cleanse to boost circulation and leave your skin brightened, balanced and invigorated. 

vintner’s daughter
Vintner’s Daughter Active Renewal Cleanser, $140, thedetoxmarket.ca Photo: The Detox Market

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Unlike so many other cult skincare brands, Vintner’s has preserved its mystique by staying small. It hasn’t cashed in on its success by going corporate and unveiling a new product every quarter. “I have very purposefully chosen not to have investors so that we can remain skin-driven,” she says. “The majority of beauty and skincare brands are maybe well-intentioned at the beginning but then they get investors and get revenue-driven.” 

As she recently told the Wall Street Journal: “All of these private-equity firms suddenly saw beauty as their Valhalla. You have this proliferation of brands without any there there…. Skin is not  their mission, financial gain is.” Gargiulo’s faithfulness to a disciplined, measured and slow approach has cannily kept the brand cult. Nothing cheapens a cult hit faster than a proliferation of lesser-than follow-ups.  I’m reminded of Stephen Spielberg’s refusal to make a sequel to ET, for fear that a sequel would only “rob the original of its virginity.” Its singularity contributes to its magic. And this principle has long applied to the beauty world. Legend goes, there was one Fountain of Youth. I doubt it would have had the same cachet if the fountain had been franchised, with one on every corner.

vintner's daughter cleanser
Photo: Vintner’s Daughter

What also, it seems to me, keeps the brand cult is that it plays into the fantasy (myth?) of effortlessness. Vintner’s proposes the idea that with these three products—a sort of Holy Trinity of skincare—you can dispense with all others. It’s easy. “When you make things better, you can use less. That’s part of what we do, we have a discipline around it,” says Gargiulo, “You have all the nutrients, all the hydration, all the moisture, all the actives, in the most precise, optimal ratio. For your most simple, most effective routine.” 

In our Age of Overwhelm and aggressive (over)consumption, where every pore seems to require its own potion, and every minute needs to be optimized, a this-is-it approach seems relaxing (if also un-relaxingly expensive). A scene in Sex and the City pops to mind, when Charlotte (before she meets and marries Harry) says: “I’ve been dating since I was 15. I’m exhausted.” I feel that I’ve been dating my way through the skincare aisles for decades, forever seduced by the next cure-all, exhausted (and apparently, according to the Detox Market salesgirl, it shows). I need to settle down. “This is what I say about Vintner’s Daughter: I don’t want to create your next product, I want to create your last product, the one you’ll marry for life. Right?” she continues. “It feels like freedom.” 

vintner’s daughter
Photo: Vintner’s Daughter

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It feels also like quiet luxury—the fashion trend du jour that exhorts the virtuous pleasures of quality-over-quantity investment shopping. If the 12-step beauty routine was last year’s maximalism, Vintner’s—in its unflashy finery and discretion—is a liquid ode to today’s brand of minimalism. Vintner’s is the Totême sweater or the timeless Row overcoat of the beauty world. It’s a lot like Gwyneth’s much discussed courtroom attire, an aesthetic that required little accessorizing, save for a glowing complexion (certainly acquired from using Vintner’s the night before). 

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