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Christina Haack’s long love affair with champagne is now her brand new business.
The HGTV star launched Clé Cachée, her signature brut, on Sept. 29 with a limited release of 30,000 bottles. “I’ve been a champagne girl for as long as I can remember,” the designer, 42, tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story. But on a trip to Napa Valley with her boyfriend Chris Larocca, 52, her “obsession” turned into a business plan.
She took several trips to Reims and Épernay in France over the last year to learn more as she developed the product. “I didn’t just slap my name on a bottle. I picked everything, from the finest Grand Cru grapes to the sugar content,” which she says is less than one Starburst candy per glass.
Christina Haack/Instagram
Aside from her interior design business, Christina & Kylie, this is the first company the star has launched. “I’ve been really picky about putting my name on things, and this is my first product where I touched every single detail of it from conception to execution,” she says.
“I’m definitely nervous [for the release] because I did pick every single bit of this,” she say. “But I’ve had experts and friends that are really into champagne do blind tastings and everyone has picked it over the other big labels. So that makes me feel confident.”
Courtesy of Clé Cachée
As for what to pair the bubbles with, Haack is a fan of charcuterie or caviar but promises there’s no wrong way to enjoy it.
The name Clé Cachée means “hidden key” in French, and symbolizes that “we all hold the key to having the life that we want,” says Haack,
It’s especially symbolic to the mom of three in this moment in her life.
“For the first time, it feels like my decisions are 100% my own,” she tells PEOPLE while discussing moving on from her third marriage and enjoying a new sense of “calm” with Larocca and her three children, Taylor, 15, Brayden, 10 and Hudson, 6. “I make my own destiny. And so that feels really.”
“I feel like before, people around me have tried to take control over my destiny . . . have felt insecure about my destiny. And so it’s like I was constantly living in a state of people-pleasing,” she shares. Now, the only person she’s worried pleasing is herself — and hopefully, her new customers.
