Making great wine is hard. Making Brunello Cucinelli wine can be even harder.
Over his 40-plus-year career, a rags-to-riches story set in his native region of Umbria in Central Italy, Cucinelli has built a reputation in the fashion world as the “king of cashmere” and the impresario of luxury sportswear worn by the rich, famous and stylish.
In other words, the Brunello Cucinelli brand doesn’t allow for anything south of smooth, perceived perfection.
Cucinelli, who is a longtime student of philosophy and aesthetics and exponent of “Humanistic Capitalism,” is also a vocal advocate for Umbria and the countryside around the medieval hilltop burg of Solomeo. Like a benevolent Renaissance lord, he has transformed the landscape—buying up hundreds of acres of commercial warehouse land to return it to nature and agriculture. As sidelines, he cultivates wheat and makes potent monovarietal olive oil. Twelve years ago, he began planting vineyards.
Which brings us to the problem: How do you tailor a Cucinelli-level wine here in Solomeo, an area not known for viticulture?
After a lot of investment and a maniacal selection of grapes and wine for minuscule production, Cucinelli may have threaded the needle with his just-released 2018 Castello di Solomeo Umbria Rosso. It’s a sort of “super Umbrian” blend of Bordeaux varieties with a touch of Sangiovese that retails for $1,200 per box of three bottles (about the price of one Cucinelli men’s cotton cable knit sweater).
I drove to Solomeo in late spring for the launch (Cucinelli characteristically labeled it a “symposium”), which was attended by nearly 200 well-attired guests, including Napa cult Cabernet vintner Bill Harlan and his son, Will, of Harlan Estate and Promontory, both of whom praise Cucinelli as a land-use visionary.
“What Brunello has created in this community is something we all pay attention to,” says Bill.
As for the winemaking, Cucinelli is frank: “I knew nothing about wine, but I am a fan of super Tuscans.”
“My favorite wine is Guado al Tasso,” he tells me—referring to Antinori’s Bolgheri Superiore. “My idea was if I could make a wine half as good, I would be happy.”
Cucinelli began thinking about producing wine and olive oil 15 years ago, as a means to diversify the life and landscape of Solomeo, which is home to Cucinelli’s headquarters and its light-filled fashion design and production campus.
“The idea was to revisit agriculture with his aesthetic,” says Michele Baiocco, an Umbrian enologist and agronomist who took the helm of the project and has become Cucinelli’s point man for agriculture and real estate.
After Cucinelli bought a ruin of a farmhouse on a gentle slope facing Solomeo’s hilltop to the south, Baiocco oversaw studies of the soils, identifying varied patches of limestone, chalk, sandstone, marl and clay.
In 2011, about 12 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Sangiovese were planted in dramatically curved rows that fan over the hillside. Another couple of acres were saved for two circular, cypress-lined contemplation gardens amid the vines.
That was followed by years of construction on a winery below the renovated farmhouse. Built into the vineyard hillside, the winery is a stunning piece of architecture and complex brickwork. Through the glass entrance doors, set behind an archway, is a vast, minimalist hall with stone floors and medieval-style ceiling vaults supported by columns. A row of conical, Slavonian oak fermenting vats stands to the far west side of the space, while barriques line up on the east side. Wine bottles fill bricked archways along the walls. The steel blending tanks, press and other mechanicals are hidden from sight in smaller quarters in the wings.
The high-profile consulting winemaker here is Umbria native Riccardo Cotarella, who has worked with international blends across Italy. What distinguishes winemaking at Castello di Solomeo is a radical selection that yields only 9,000 bottles. The grapes are rigorously sorted bunch by bunch, each vineyard parcel is fermented separately, and only free-run juice makes it to barrel, with the pressed stuff sold off in bulk. After 16 months in new barriques, a little over half of the finished wine makes it into the final blend, Baiocco says.
The resulting wine tastes cooler, showing more fruit and softer tannins than its generally more structured counterparts from Tuscany, including Guado al Tasso.
For Cotarella, the wine’s character is shaped by the cooler climate of landlocked Umbria, which tends to have a longer growing season than its Tuscan neighbor to the west. “It’s Umbria style—that’s our only goal,” he says.
The price, however, is probably more in keeping with tonier world capitals. Half of the production has gone to Fine+Rare, the global online wine-trading and cellar-management firm that recently merged with Vinfolio. The other half will be kept by Cucinelli for the winery and to pour at his brand events.
“A lot of the interest is from new fine-wine buyers—younger people with a lot of money who don’t have big cellars like traditional wine collectors,” Don St. Pierre Jr. , Fine+Rare’s vice chairman, tells me that evening in Solomeo. “They want a story. And the idea of buying the first vintage from an incredibly successful brand is appealing to them.”
As with everything Cucinelli, there’s a lot of story to unpack here.
“We don’t make wine,” says Baiocco. “We make wine in our context.”
That means sustainable farming, a small and close-knit young team, and an aesthetic watched over by one of the world’s most scrutinizing eyes.
Baiocco recalls some years ago when a new, shiny green-and-yellow John Deere tractor appeared at the estate.
“Why does it have to be in such ugly colors?” Cucinelli protested.
The tractor was brought to a local autobody shop and repainted a subdued shade of charcoal.
For more on Umbria, read Robert Camuto’s article Umbria Time.
