12 celebrity-owned liquor brands, ranked by the price of a bottle

Price source: The Whiskey Exchange.

Jay-Z’s origin in the liquor industry stems from a feud with Cristal Champagne. When the director of the company that makes Cristal was asked about what he thought of all the rappers drinking their Champagne and including it in their lyrics, he said “What can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it.”

“Jay-Z heard about his comments, he removed it from his 40/40 Club, and more importantly, he started issuing this sort of directive to his fans not to drink it either,” Zack O’Malley Greenburg, author of 3 Kings: Diddy, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, and Hip-Hop’s Multibillion-Dollar Rise, told Business Insider.

“Instead of rapping about Cristal, he put his money where is mouth was, he ended up investing in — and eventually taking over — French Champagne brand called Armand de Brignac, AKA Ace of Spades,” Greenburg said.