Outside the Beltway

Drunk Orson Welles Sells Wine

Doug Mataconis · Friday, June 1, 2012 · 2 comments

Many of you are likely old enough to remember the Paul Masson commercials with Orson Welles and the tag line “Paul Masson will sell no wine before it’s time.” Via Rod Dreher, here’s a set of outtakes from those commercials that apparently reveal that, regardless of when it’s sold, Mr. Wells clearly didn’t believe that there wasn’t a good time to drink that wine:

Incidentally, there’s a legend that Welles was dropped as a spokesman for the company in the 1980s after saying during a television interview that he never drank Paul Masson. Quite honestly, I’m not sure anyone did.