The king of cashmere’s new winePeter Howarth previews the knitwear maestro Brunello Cucinelli’s latest offering — a sumptuous redBrunello Cucinelli is launching what he calls an Italian bordeaux, Castello di Solomeo
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Peter Howarth
Friday January 27 2023, 1.05pm GMT, The TimesT

here’s an established tradition of successful people going into winemaking.

One of the most famous is the director of The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola, whoonce quipped: “The two professions are almost the same. Each depends on source
material and takes a lot of time to perfect. The big difference is that today’s winemakers
still worry about quality.”
Something similar could be said of the relationship between winemaking and fashion
design, and one designer who most certainly cares about quality is Brunello Cucinelli,famed for his softly tailored clothing for men and women. Cucinelli has risen toprominence since the late Seventies when he began as a maker of cashmere knitwear.

Cucinelli restored the medieval town of Solomeo in Umbria
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Now, he — like Coppola — has become a winemaker, launching his first vintage
Castello di Solomeo (Castle of Solomeo) 2018. It debuted recently at a celebratory
dinner in the Instituto dei Ciechi in Milan, in the kind of setting — historical building,decorated ceiling — that Cucinelli loves. This, after all, is a man who restored themedieval town of Solomeo in Umbria where his fashion company is headquartered.
Solomeo provided the inspiration for the viniculture venture. In 2018 Cucinelli unveiled
the culmination of a programme of works on the land he owns around the hilltop town,including five hectares of vines — about 20,000. These were planted in 2011 in thecurved form of a series of waves. The soil here is of three types: marly arenaceous,alluvial clay-silt and alluvial clay-sandy. Each has been used to cultivate a separate
variety of grape: cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon and merlot. These have been
blended to create what the designer describes as an Italian bordeaux, which is completed
by the addition of Sangiovese grapes, a nod to the wines of central Italy.
Cucinelli is far too modest to claim he knew what he was doing, enlisting the advice of
the well-known oenologist Riccardo Cotarella. The vineyard will aim to make about
9,000 bottles a year.
The resulting red is much like the designer’s clothes — structured but also soft. The
combination of formal and relaxed style is the Cucinelli signature, and the secret of his
popularity. These are not collections that are tied to trends, nor do they have discernible
branding, logos or motifs to signify their provenance. The Cucinelli crowd eschews
wardrobe ostentation in favour of discreet good taste and the wine aims to appeal to asimilarly sophisticated clientele.

The site has five hectares of vines — about 20,000
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The vineyard will aim to make about 9,000 bottles annually
N I C OL A M I L L E T T I / B RU N E L L O C U C I N E L L ICucinelli is fashion’s philosopher, more likely to quote the Roman emperor and Stoic
Marcus Aurelius than discuss the width of a lapel. Given this, winemaking, with its
ancient history as a social lubricant, is right up his via, as the Romans might have put it.

As the designer says: “I believe there is nothing more beautiful than sharing this
precious fruit, born out of a long process of care and custody, with lifelong friends andloved ones. Just as it was in ancient Greece, I like to imagine that this wine of ours cangladden the most pleasant symposia, renewing this most human of rituals.” Cheers.