Italian fashion mogul Brunello Cucinelli calls Solomeo, a tiny Umbrian hilltop village not far from Perugia, his “hamlet of cashmere and harmony”.
And now it’s a hamlet of wine, too.
Even those who do not follow fashion (and why don’t you?) have probably heard his rags-to-cashmere story. Cucinelli started with indulgent women’s sweaters dyed in bright colours inspired by Benetton, and more than 45 years later, he oversees a global empire of high-end and effortlessly elegant luxury wear that includes men’s suits, fragrances, shoes and more.
Solomeo is Cucinelli’s home and the site of his company’s headquarters. Thanks to the restoration work he has overseen and financed over several decades, it is a vibrant modern version of a medieval Italian village.
“I wanted to create the kind of life that was beautiful, in the country, truly living in harmony with nature — all things come from the earth,” he says in an interview in his light-filled office.
The latest addition to this vision is an ambitious, exclusive and expensive red wine labelled Castello di Solomeo.
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You might expect it to be based on sagrantino, the red grape variety indigenous to Umbria and responsible for the famously bold, tannic wines of the Montefalco area south of Perugia. But it’s instead modelled on the world-renowned Super Tuscan reds that Cucinelli “loves”.
Those are made primarily from blends of international grapes such as cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc, sometimes with a dollop of sangiovese. His favourite Super Tuscan, he says, is Antinori’s Guado al Tasso; he intended Castello di Solomeo as an Umbrian version.
I sampled the first four vintages — 2018 and 2019, as well as 2020 and 2021 (the latter two have yet to be released) — at a two-day burgundy-style La Paulée festival last November in Solomeo. It was organised by New York wine entrepreneur and sommelier Daniel Johnnes, who’s behind the annual La Paulée event in the US as well as La Fête du Champagne.
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The recently released 2019 was my clear favourite. The growing season in Umbria was exceptional that year, so the wine is fresh, savoury and balanced. Lighter in style than Super Tuscans (the Umbrian climate is cooler), it boasts dark fruit, polished tannins and the soft structure of a Cucinelli jacket.
As for the others, the 2018 is vibrant, smooth and plush, although it is not as finely detailed as the 2019. The lush-coloured 2020 is attractively fruity, with a note of citrus in the finish, while the 2021 is minty and slightly herbal.
The 2018 premiered last year, and the 2019 just went on sale in the US at US$1,200 ($1,607) for a three-pack. The per-bottle price is significantly less than the cost of a Cucinelli cashmere sweater, but because only about 9,000 bottles of each vintage were made, the wine is more exclusive. (It is only available through Fine+Rare, an international online marketplace.)
How Castello di Solomeo will taste after a decade of ageing is still an open question, but clearly, Cucinelli is positioning it as a collectible to hang on to.
I’m sure you want to know: Is it worth the price? While the wine does not yet have a sensual, cashmere-like texture or the distinctiveness, depth and richness of the best Super Tuscans, it has rarity and a serious charitable component.
Profits from the wine will go to Cucinelli’s Universal Library, in an 18th century villa in Solomeo that he envisions as a space filled with classic texts of philosophy, architecture and literature — selected by an expert panel — where anyone can read and study.
As a writer, I’m all for that.
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Why wine?
Don’t assume Castello di Solomeo is just some billionaire’s ego vino. It is part of Cucinelli’s expansive vision of “humanistic capitalism and human sustainability”, the title of his talk to world leaders at the G20 in October 2021, and detailed on his website.
It includes a spate of ongoing projects, ideas, and actions that have won him awards and speaking time at major international conferences. “Winemaking,” he says, “is a tribute to Mother Earth. Making quality wine is a way of restoring economic and moral dignity to human beings who work the land.”
Cucinelli was once one of them. The son of a humble farmer, he grew up in the nearby village of Castel Rigone, helping his father work the land with an ox-drawn plough. When he was a teenager, the family moved to Perugia, where his father worked in a “dehumanising” factory. Cucinelli studied to be a surveyor, educating himself with classic works of ethics, theology and philosophy, which he quotes frequently.
This self-education and his belief in the importance of revitalising the countryside inspired his desire to create a kind of modern rural utopia in Solomeo, with himself as a benevolent patriarch. He restored the hamlet’s buildings, created a Renaissance-style theatre, redid the brick streets and placed marble plaques with inscriptions of sayings by Aristotle, Plato and Marcus Aurelius all over the village.
The winery and vineyard were the next step, part of Cucinelli’s Project for Beauty, which began in 2010 as he bought up hundreds of acres of warehouse land in the valley below Solomeo. The aim was to return the area to nature and agriculture, which, this being Italy, meant growing not just wheat but also olive trees and vineyards.
Cucinelli admits he knew nothing about winemaking. “My father’s local wine was terrible,” he says. He pulled in Umbrian agronomist Michele Baiocco to find the right site for a vineyard, enlisted noted Italian enological consultant Riccardo Cotarella to fine-tune the wine, and built an impressive winery with a stone facade and an interior of medieval-style vaults and columns made from some 178,000 bricks.
The huge terrace in front of it features a marble statue of Bacchus and overlooks 5 hectares of undulating rows of vines planted in 2011. It’s a sizable investment for a mere 9,000 bottles of wine.
The inaugural La Paulée gathering that Cucinelli hosted to show off the first vintages of Castello di Solomeo drew some 200 luminaries from the worlds of fashion, finance and technology — and even a few royals.
Saskia de Rothschild of Château Lafite gave a talk on adapting to climate change (and poured Lafite), and Guillaume d’Angerville, head of a great Burgundy domaine, spoke about the problems of wine speculation. Later, Michel Troisgros, chef of his family’s eponymous three-Michelin-starred restaurant, one of the most storied in France, cooked dinner.
“Quality and exclusivity are everything for wine as well as fashion,” Cucinelli explains, “but it all has to have a higher purpose.”
For him, that meant creating a vineyard with the beauty of the Renaissance gardens that inspired its design, taking care of the environment and, most of all, paying his workers more than just a living wage and treating them with dignity and respect.
“Would you be willing to drink a wine if the winery doesn’t treat its workers well?” he asks. “I don’t want to buy anything if I know the workers aren’t respected.”
Will people pay US$400 for a bottle of wine with these principles behind its label? The success of Cucinelli’s luxury fashion empire signals that the answer is probably yes.
