Casella Family Wines has joined with Buffy The Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar to launch a new range of [ yellow tail ] wines in the US: Pure Bright.

Pure Bright wines contain 85 calories or less, and are the first lower calorie, lower alcohol wine from a major wine brand to weigh in at less than US$7 a bottle. The range is vegan, gluten free, and available in Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay.

Gellar joins celebrities including Kylie Minogue, Snoop Dog and Sarah Jessica Parker who have teamed up with Antipodean winemakers. Minogue recently collaborated with Howard Park winemaker Janice McDonald to create a Chardonnay; while Parker makes Sauvignon Blanc and Rosé with New Zealand’s Invivo; and 19 Crimes launched a range with rapper Snoop Dog.

[ yellow tail ] is America’s best-selling imported wine brand and has spent the last several years creating a proprietary process to maximise flavour while minimizing calories and alcohol.

“Until now, lower calorie wines have been seen as light on flavour,” said John Casella, Managing Director of Casella Family Brands. “That was a trade-off we weren’t willing to make. We took the opposite approach, ensuring great taste and then working our way backward to deliver on making it lighter.”

It begins with the grapes, which are specially cultivated and picked at exactly the right moment to maximize brightness and acidity. Once harvested, [ yellow tail ] winemakers use proprietary blending techniques and gentle reverse osmosis to reduce alcohol content and ultimately calories while maintaining all of the original flavour.

The digital campaign for the brand gives fans a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the mother, actress, author, and entrepreneur Gellar’s life, and how she makes time for herself.

“Like many busy mums I’m constantly multi-tasking,” Gellar said. “But at the end of the day, I want to lighten things up a little. Pure Bright tastes great and is the perfect way to bring some balance back into my life.” 

Gellar fell in love with Australia’s white wines while filming Down Under. “I think for me it was more about the experience of being able to document a time and place with taste,” she told Wine Spectator. “You learn a lot about a culture, a city and a country based on what they drink. … [The Pure Bright lineup has] a very specific flavor profile. Yellow Tail kept the essence that makes a wine beautiful.”

The actress told US magazine that she and husband Freddie Prinze Jr are “definitely big” wine drinkers and love winding down from a day of parenting with a glass of [ yellow tail ] Pure Bright.

“It’s light enough to have on a weekday where you have no guilt, no sacrifice,” she said. “It has all of these like really crisp flavours that you look for on a hot summer day when you just want to enjoy that glass.”

Click here to watch Sarah Michelle Gellar’s interview with US.