FORGET the Cristal. The hot new drink’s name on every fashionista’s lips is Cavalli. Yes, you read right, Cavalli as in Roberto, he of the leopard-skin lifestyle and the iridescent yacht, the designer of a thousand bling- covered red carpet frocks and great friend of Victoria Beckham.
It seems that just as we thought designer decadence had reached its zenith, those purveyors of branded style have decided to place their less-than-subtle stamp on consumables. We’re not talking champagne packaging. This new vino is Cavalli from the i
nside out – a deep, full-flavoured Tuscan red wine – appropriate when you think given the Italian designer’s expansive manner, dark brown voice and cigar habit.
So is this the ultimate vanity project? In the past, many designers have put their names to often-inferior products far removed from their core business, in the assumption that the brand would help them sell.
According to Cavalli this is a rather more serious venture. And certainly his choice of red wine is interesting.
At the starry launch in an upmarket London restaurant on Thursday evening, where Sarah Ferguson and Bianca Jagger were among a guest list that also included Sharleen Spiteri, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Beverley Knight, there was a certain air of perturbation as the water-or-Pinot-Grigio-only fashion types tried to work out how many extra calories were signified by the deep-claret hue.
I meet Cavalli earlier that day in the 360 degree-view London penthouse that he keeps as a studio for his photography hobby. Sitting next to him on the cream velvet sofa is his eldest son, Tommaso.
According to Cavalli, the wine is really Tommaso’s “baby”. The designer is very much the proud grandfather – “it’s my son who had the passion to make this possible”, he insists. “I just dressed the bottle”.
The estate where the wine is made is one of the nearest Chianti vineyards to Florence, about 20 miles away – “I think Michelangelo’s David can see our vines”, says Cavalli.
It has been the family country house for decades, and some years ago Tommaso moved there to pursue his interest in breeding horses, deciding in the late 1990s that they should also try making their own wine from slopes suitable for growing vines.
“I trusted him because he does everything to perfection,” says Cavalli. “I had brood mares already and we produced nice foals, but with the same mares Tommaso produces champions. I thought he would do the same with wine.”
Tommaso decided there was no point making an ordinary Chianti and called in well-known local winemaker Carlo Ferrini. When they planted the vines in 2000, “we decided not to use the usual Sangiovese grape, which makes Chianti,” says Tommaso. “We chose more classic French-style varieties as used in Bordeaux”.
In this they are following a number of other boutique wineries in the area and producing what is known as a “super-Tuscan” – a small-production, concentrated wine with a claret-like structure but benefiting from Tuscany’s hotter, more consistent climate – the best of which fetch high prices.
The first year, 2004, “we were agreeably surprised by how good it was,” says Tommaso, but production was so small it never got beyond a few Tuscan restaurants.
Now they are marketing the 2005 in Britain and are expanding both production and international markets for subsequent years – they have built a state-of-the-art cellar under the ninth-century church of San Leolino next to the estate, where the wine is matured in French oak barrels for 18 months, and then another year in bottle before it is delivered.
I can believe Cavalli when he says they are not doing this for money – they already have all the accoutrements of a high-glam lifestyle and winemaking is notoriously hard work. But Cavalli’s explanation for the wine’s success – “the passion and love that have gone into it” – is just too schmaltzy.
The truth is somewhere in between. Tommaso undoubtedly has the passion and resources to make a good wine, and Cavalli was canny enough to realise that his name and a touch of his design pizazz could be a selling point. The basic version of the wine is elegant enough – the bottle has two strips of a classic Cavalli print that will change with each vintage. So far leopard, zebra and butterfly prints have been used. It costs a not- inconsiderable £47.
The Collection version of the same wine is grand couture style – a hand-blown, spiral-patterned bottle with embossed gold leaf Cavalli crest in a dark brown, leopard print-lined, leather box for £196, or in a lockable box with two hand-blown, black, gold-crested glasses and an enamelled, snake-embellished corkscrew for £510.
But are serious wine drinkers bothered with all this designer paraphernalia? The short answer is no, according to Master of Wine Rosemary George, a Tuscany expert and author of Treading Grapes: Walking the Vineyards of Tuscany.
“For wine lovers, it’s the quality, not a famous name and packaging, which counts,” she says. “But they have an expert winemaker on board who wouldn’t put his name to something inferior, and the resources to do a decent job. Adding a not-very exciting local grape – Alicante Bouchet – to the classic French mix is surprising, but it’s probably there to give colour. And the price of the basic bottle is in line, given that Ferrini is behind it.”
Does the taste live up to the grand name and design? I would say so. Though it will only improve with a year or two longer in the bottle.
So are we witnessing the start of a trend in designer alcohol? Cavalli has already put his name to vodka that, says a spokesman for Selfridges, who stock it, “sells very well in its decorative, eye-catching bottle”. Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh have the Tanqueray gin T10 martini box, in silver, by cool British designer Giles Deacon, a rosé “upside down” Piper Heidsieck champagne bottle by Viktor and Rolf, and a Grey Goose limited edition vodka bottle by Armani, and say such designer tie-ups are very successful.
Cavalli may have deeper reasons for going into wine. Other Italian fashion families, such as Pucci and Ferragamo, have long had vineyards – as George says, “there are a lot of well-known names in Tuscan wine” – and joining such aristocrats gives respectability. Also, in his late sixties, he is successfully reinventing himself as an homme sérieux, speaking earlier this week to the Oxford Union, where he was a great hit, surprisingly railing against the flesh-baring vulgarity of current celebrity culture. Having his own, well-respected wine adds to this.
Yet he still cannot resist the glitz. The London restaurants that will sell it, such as Cipriani and Zafferano, are celebrity hangouts. The Thursday-night launch party boasted a long list of famous names. Of course the wine trade doesn’t get to have a serious tasting until the end of the summer. Then the proof really will be in the drinking.
• Cavalli wine is available online at
www.deglidei.com The full article contains 1204 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
