Exclusive: Aaron Tippin Talks About His Two Passions, Music and Wine

When Aaron Tippin released his debut single, 'You've Got to Stand for Something,' the title track [...]

By Gayle Thompson

When Aaron Tippin released his debut single, "You've Got to Stand for Something," the title track of his freshman album in 1990, he likely didn't imagine himself still making music almost three decades later, but that's exactly what he's doing. The 59-year-old, whose last album, Aaron Tippin 25, was released in 2015, is still writing, and figuring out what his next project will be.

"[I'm] kind of getting back into song writing back in Nashville, and really focused on that right now," Tippin tells PopCulture.com. "We've bumped around a couple ideas, but I haven't settled on anything. A wild hair hasn't hit me yet. I think that's kind of what it is now. We have our own label. We're just looking for the right opportunity. I'm really after, in this new world of country music, trying to learn how to write hits for these guys. That'd be my thrill. That'd be my thrill if I could write a hit, or co-write a hit with one of those guys, you know, for one of them. See it go to No. 1. That'd be pretty cool."

Tippin also has another passion of his: wine. The singer has his own wine, which began with a blackberry flavor and now also includes cherry.

"[I've] got to credit my wife's dad," Tippin says. "He was a big wine drinker and turned me onto a delicious red wine. And, of course, once I tasted that, I fell in love with wine and I haven't had a beer since then. That's been 22 years ago, probably 23. And I decided then, Mr. Do-It-Yourselfer, I thought, 'Can I make wine?' And so I came back to Nashville, started hanging out at the wine shops where they sell the kits and stuff, and so I started making my own wine.

"One thing led to another," continues Tippin. "I built me a little winery at the farm and we made lots of wine there. We came along with 25 years, we wanted to commemorate the 25 years, and we decided not only with an album but also, why don't we do it with a bottle of wine? Hooked up with some friends of ours at Crossville Stonehaus Winery and we did a blackberry wine. That was the 25th commemorative wine was a blackberry."

It's only recently that Tippin added the cherry flavor, which is already selling out.

"The blackberry went so well and did so good, we all enjoyed working together so much, we decided, what are we going to do next?" says Tippin. "So now we have the cherry. And it's going big guns. We've already had to reorder the juice to make another 1100 gallons because this is almost gone."

The Florida native is involved in every aspect of the wine-making process, from beginning to end, and is now considering which flavor to create next.

"There's a lot to choose from," shares Tippin. "There's a strawberry, maybe a peach. There's dandelion. There is all kind of stuff you could possibly do. So, I don't know. We'll see. It'll be like the cherry did. We had two or three different samples of juice and we tried em all and cherry just said, 'It's me, it's me.' So I kind of feel like that'll happen next."

As Tippin looks back on his illustrious – and eclectic – career, there's one memory that stands out for him above the rest.

"My very first tour was on The Bob Hope Show, Christmas of 1991," Tippin recounts. "And from there it went to one of the guys that was on the battlefield, a marine captain flying an F18 Hornet became an Aaron Tippin fan because I came to the desert to entertain them. And he later became a NASA mission commander and took my music to space. So I've got a picture of a CD floating in front of an astronaut inside the space shuttle and you can see the earth through the windshield of the space shuttle.

"[I] never thought my hillbilly music would ever get to space," he continues. "I played them all. And I played 'Stars and Stripes' with the Washington Monument standing right in front of me. You know, I've had more than I ever deserve. And, as I call myself, the luckiest hillbilly that's ever lived."

Purchase Aaron Tippin 25 at AaronTippin.com.

Photo Credit: Instagram/aarontippin

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