Xiao-Li Meng, Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics at Harvard and Founding Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Data Science Review, was inspired by a student to combine wine and statistics—leading to insights far beyond what they ever expected.

From wine tastings to data science, Xiao-Li Meng explores how statistics reveals simplicity in complexity – one glass, experiment, and insight at a time.

Wine, statistics & serendipity: A Harvard journey

Seeking simplicity in statistics, complexity in wine, and everything else in fortune cookies 

About Académie du Vin Founded in Paris in 1973 by Steven Spurrier, the Académie du Vin was the first wine school in France open to the public. It has long been associated with thoughtful, independent wine scholarship and with bringing clarity, context, and critical insight to the world’s great wine regions. About this article This article presents the introduction to Côte d’Or: The wines and winemakers of the heart of Burgundy (2nd Edition) by Raymond Blake. In it, Blake sets the scene for Burgundy’s most revered stretch of vineyard, exploring the historical, cultural and human forces that shape the Côte d’Or. The introduction offers essential context on place, tradition and the vignerons themselves—laying the groundwork for a deeper understanding of Burgundy’s wines and the people behind them. Introduction The Côte d’Or, the Golden Slope, enjoys a reputation and exerts an influence in the wine world out of all proportion to its size. It possesses none of the grandeur of the Douro Valley, for instance, nor the picture-postcard beauty of South Africa’s winelands. It is not majestic; its beauty is serene, and what strikes the observer time and again is the tiny scale. From north to south it is about 50 kilometres long, is sometimes less than a kilometre wide, and can be driven in little more than an hour. At a push it could be walked in a day. Yet for a thousand or more years this favoured slope has yielded wines that have entranced and delighted wine lovers, with a fair measure of frustration and disappointment thrown in too. Avoiding hyperbole when writing about the Côte d’Or is a problem, for it has held people in thrall for centuries, frequently prompting poetic flights of prose: ‘The Pathetic Fallacy resounds in all our praise of wine … This Burgundy seemed to me, then, serene and triumphant … it whispered faintly, but in the same lapidary phrase, the same words of hope.’ Thus wrote Evelyn Waugh in Brideshead Revisited eighty years ago. Literary critics might cavil at such prolixity, and Waugh himself tamed it severely in later editions, but it was enough to intrigue me decades ago and engender a love for the region and its wines that has never waned. Greater Burgundy is a bigger, more geographically diverse, region than might first be supposed, stretching from Chablis, south-east of Paris, to Beaujolais, north of Lyon. The subject matter of this book, however, is Burgundy’s heart, the Côte d’Or. There is no more celebrated stretch of agricultural land on earth. It has been pored over and analysed, feted and cosseted, obsessed about and sought after for centuries and today, if anything, it exerts a greater pull on wine lovers than ever before. ‘Astronomical’ does not begin to describe the prices now being paid for prized patches of grand and premier cru vineyard, and for the wines produced from them by the top domaines. Such prices hog the headlines and paint a dazzling, though severely one-dimensional, picture of the Côte d’Or today. In the early years of the twenty-first century they are part of the story but they are not the only part. This book aims to get behind the dazzle and flesh out the story, to add some nuance and extra dimension. The Côte d’Or cannot be captured in a sound bite nor, it must be admitted, in a book of this scope – but my hope is that it may add another chapter to the ever-unfolding tale, setting it in the early years of the twenty-first century, a period that may come to be considered by future historians as a golden age for Burgundy but which has brought its own challenges in the shape of those ludicrous prices, the scandal of premature oxidation in the white wines, and the increasing challenge of dealing with extreme weather events such as hail and spring frost. The Côte d’Or has been the subject of forensic scrutiny for centuries, generating a library of books, so why another one now? For the simple reason that it is ever changing. Every year sees new names added to the producers’ roster and old ones slipping away, and thanks to this ongoing evolution the infant domaine of today can be the superstar of tomorrow. The core of the book comprises about a hundred producer profiles. Many fine domaines and négociants whose wines I am happy to purchase and drink have not found a place here. It is important to stress that they have not been included, rather than excluded, simply for reasons of space. The aim was to feature a representative collection of producers, not a top-down selection of the most celebrated names in descending order of renown. As a consequence this book is not, nor was it ever intended to be, a comprehensive A to Z of producers. I write as an amateur du vin, an enthusiast whose admiration for the wines of Burgundy stretches back over four decades, and who has been visiting the region and writing about the wines for some thirty years. I do not trade in wine. I try to see beyond the wine to get something of the backstory, the story of people and place that makes the Côte d’Or so fascinating. To examine the wines in isolation is to dislocate them from that, and not knowing something of the backstory precludes a full understanding of them. A broad lens must be brought to bear on the côte. Too narrow, and the wood will never be seen for the trees. I have learned much by coming across things serendipitously rather than dashing hither and thither, seeing a lot but noticing little. Without time for assimilation and reflection, subtlety and shade are missed. Finally, no gustatory experience can match the thrill of a great Côte d’Or red drunk at its peak. The colour, crimsoned by age; the heavenly scent, perfumed with notes of sweet decay; a sauvage edge, the palate lively and tingling, managing to be so many things at once, oscillating between fruit and spice and meat and game, a merry-go-round of flavour, spiralling on the palate, refusing to be pinned down by anything so prosaic as a tasting note. All the primary components melded by age and yielding up new ones, unsignalled when the wine was young. Everything cohesive and in harmony, like a great orchestra playing at its best. Above all, vital and living, endlessly enchanting and intriguing, engaging the palate and the spirit like no other wine. Learn more about Raymond Blake's Côte d'Or (2nd edition) Shop all books from the Académie du Vin Library Visit the Académie du Vin website

Explore Burgundy with the introduction from Raymond Blake's book: Côte d'Or: The wines and winemakers of the heart of Burgundy. Blake tells the whole story of this hugely influential region, painting a complete picture of life there: the history, landscape, climate, culture and people.

Discover Raymond Blake's Côte d'Or (2nd Edition): a deep dive into Burgundy's wines, winemakers, history, culture and the people behind this iconic region.

Raymond Blake on the Côte d'Or

Oak barrels have been used in winemaking for thousands of years. While initially their purpose was simply as a holding vessel, today it is much more than this. As we have learnt about wine production at a molecular level, we have discovered the unique interaction between oak and wine – adding flavour, textural complexity and increased ageing potential. These intrinsic qualities have seen oak at the forefront of fine wine’s greatest success stories – but also some of its greatest failures. The use of oak to improve a wine requires great skill and finding that balance has shaped the modern history of fine wine.  What is rather beautiful about winemaking, particularly in fine wine circles, is that despite the input from developments in science and technology, production remains an artisan craft, relying both on tradition and technology. The barrel-maker is a perfect example of this partnership and no one understands this better than François Frères. This lauded Burgundy cooper’s ties to the world’s greatest wines make it one of a very small number that have lived through the development and fashions within fine wine.  Today, business has never been better for François Frères; they produce 30,000 barrels a year and export to every major wine region in the world. The secret to the François Frères barrels historically, Gigandet believes, is their consistency, while the all-important signature toasting is paramount. To keep up with the ever-growing world of fine wine, François Frères produces tailor-made barrels that fit the varying climates and varying styles of each winemaker, meeting the standards set by today’s precision-led winemaking. Despite the growth of the business in recent years, François Frères still remains intrinsically linked to its homeland in Burgundy and the specific microclimate of Saint-Romain that is so important for the seasoning of their oak – another key factor behind the company’s success. “The microclimate of Saint-Romain, in a windy and pollution-free environment is ideal for the seasoning and drying of the oak. This oxidation of phenolic compounds under the influence of fungi, releases enzymes that hydrolyse the phenolic compounds, reducing the wood’s astringency, producing oak of the finest quality for wine production,” Gigandet tells me. The art of the cooper is much more than just sawing and toasting – it’s about sourcing, traceability, control of drying time and heating, hygiene, temperature control, sorting and more. With increased knowledge, the quality of the barrels, like that of the wines, has greatly improved. Even just a few years ago, Gigandet admits that in colder Burgundy vintages, sometimes their barrels jarred with the wine – they “brought too much tension and could sometimes seem too austere”. But now they have a better understanding of the qualities their barrels can bring to Burgundy: “François Frères barrels remain attractive to winemakers because they are great at retaining freshness and minerality.” Perhaps most importantly, François Frères wants its barrels to amplify a wine’s intrinsic qualities. “It wants to accentuate the beautiful tannic structure of a wine, contribute to its flavour but without excess of sweetness from the toasting, as well as amplifying the wine's tension and minerality, helping retain its freshness and its fruit,” Gigandet says. As technology has developed, so has François Frères. It is what Gigandet aptly calls “the evolution of taste” – “the cask has evolved considerably over the last few decades along with the quality of the wines. Today, the barrel is much more specific, manufacturing almost tailor-made barrels for each customer’s needs.” The business was founded by Joseph François in the early 1900s, never imagining that being a cooper would become a full-time job. Back then, Gigandet reminds us, “It took several trades to live.” But the next generation, Robert and Henri François, saw the demand for oak casks rise, at that time mainly used to transport wines. They took the operation full-time, creating the François Frères brand in 1942. In those days, as Gigandet points out, “The tradition of maturing wines in barrels was reserved only for the very top red and white wines of Burgundy and the great Bordeaux châeaux.” Even within these regions, barrels were a luxury, re-used year after year given their expense, therefore keeping the demand for new barrels low. By the 1960s the brothers were met by the development of stainless steel and plastic containers. The barrel quickly lost it supremacy as the preferred vessel for transportation and demand plummeted. It was only the top producers that helped keep the cooperage going. By the 1970s François Frères was producing barrels for one of the world’s most famous estates, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti – a partnership that would be instrumental in the continuation of the business through a difficult period. The next generation – Robert's son, Jean – was confronted by the economic downturn of the early 1970s and turned to export to save the family business. Fortuitously at this time, oenologists in the United States started to highlight how ageing wines in new oak barrels brought complementary flavours and complexity to the wines. In the 1980s, the French market caught onto the idea and both export and domestic markets grew. The oak barrel was entering an era where it would become the star of the show – and a must for all top producers. François Frères’s reputation for working with the best saw it perfectly placed to capitalise on this new-found love for the barrel. But according to Gigandet, it wasn’t just the fashion of using new oak in the 1980s and ’90s that saw such a huge increase in demand. This trend emerged just as wine exports exploded. What he calls “the democratisation of wine” saw the world of wine suddenly open up to the middle classes – and this increase in sales saw an ever-increasing need to maintain quality and improve consistency. Such demand prompted and funded a better scientific and technological understanding of wine production. More importantly for François Frères, it fuelled the need for a better understanding of what barrel-ageing does to wine – and why. It was already clear that contact with new oak changed wine profoundly. Most obviously the aromas and flavours of the wine develop, becoming more complex. These aromas and flavours are formed during the toasting of the barrels. “It is this toasting of the barrel that remains the signature of the cooper,” explains Gigandet. But the oak didn’t just impact the flavour, they came to understand that, being porous, oak allowed the wine to undergo “controlled oxygenation”. The exchange of air through the oak staves, in particular for red wines, helps stabilise the colour and polymerise the tannins. This polymerisation not only softens the wine, but brings a textural complexity, a millefeuille layering of mouth-feel brought about by the linking of long tannin chains, encouraged by the micro-oxygenation process that the wine goes through when aged in oak barrel. “François Frères barrels are ageing tools, which contribute to the textural improvement of wines, when used wisely,” Gigandet explains. As the wine world’s love of oak grew, François Frères’ main export customers went from little-known names to pioneers in their respective regions – with Robert Mondavi in the US, Angelo Gaja in Italy, Nicolas Catena in Argentina and Australia’s Rosemount winery. Each of these producers further cemented the cooper’s reputation, representing the very pinnacle of oak barrel production. Of course, like all fashions, the oak craze of the ’90s saw some extreme uses – 200% new oak ageing or an over-reliance on oak to provide flavour to wines that lacked the natural concentration to carry it. This saw many producers and consumers react strongly against its presence in wine at all. Even Gigandet admits that there are wines with “excess woodiness” to their detriment. Today, the barrel also has to compete with new trends in wine maturation – concrete eggs and clay amphorae, for instance. But while these new vessels have captured the imagination of the world’s top winemakers, it is not necessarily at the expense of the barrel. “The barrel has an important oenological role in the development of wines from certain grape varieties,” states Gigandet – notably Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah and Pinot Noir. But he also outlines how different ageing vessels combined can also benefit a wine’s potential for complexity. This is certainly the case amongst some leading producers in Bordeaux and Burgundy that are using both oak barrels and alternative ageing vessels. Coopers like François Frères have weathered the changing relationship wine has had with the barrel; with shifting views of critics and drinkers over the last century. Fortunately for fine wine lovers, there’s little sign of oak fading into the background. Oak remains a vital ingredient in many of the world’s greatest wines, adding to its flavour, textural complexity and – of course – ageing potential. Today oak has never been so deftly handled, bringing so much to a wine, while retaining the grapes’ natural expression. The art of the cooper lives on. Read more Editorial 

Oak has played a vital role in the changing history of fine wine. In 2021 we spoke to Max Gigandet – Managing Director of leading Burgundy cooper François Frères – to explore the power of a good barrel and why oak isn’t going anywhere

Exploring the vital role oak has played in the changing history of fine wine and the power of a good barrel with François Frères

François Frères on the art of the cooper

Finding the balance: the art of the cooper

Burgundy expert Jasper Morris MW has had his finger on the region’s wine pulse for several decades. Especially for FONDATA, he profiles eight domaines to watch, producers that are bringing vital energy and fresh winemaking talent to the celebrated wine region 

Jasper Morris MW on eight of Burgundy’s most exciting domaines – including Eleni & Edouard Vocoret, Chantereves, Alvina Pernot and more 

The new Burgundians – Jasper Morris MW 

The new Burgundians

The air is cool and crisp, with the radiant blue skies that only late winter can provide. On the crest of the hill in front of me, a troupe is studiously pruning Ch. Lafite Rothschild’s oldest Cabernet Sauvignon vines, their roots sinking deep into the precious gravel soils that define the First Growth’s wines. Looking over a junior member of the team’s shoulder is Luís Pinto, making sure that no mistakes are being made as they shape the vines for the future, laying the groundwork for not just 2024, but the vintages beyond that. Sporting navy-blue Domaines Barons de Rothschild overalls (vintage, sadly out of production and unavailable for purchase – I asked), Pinto has been working at the estate for over 30 years, and now leads one of the vineyard teams. As you might guess given his name, his family is Portuguese, although he was born and raised in Bordeaux. In fact, his mother even worked the harvest at Lafite, and Pinto has pictures of himself as a child at the on-site nursery the château then had for workers’ offspring – perhaps sewing the first seeds of his future profession. As Louis Caillard, Vineyard Manager at Ch. Lafite Rothschild and Ch. Duhart-Milon, explains, Pinto isn’t an anomaly. Caillard heads up the 80-strong team which works across both properties (and are managed identically when it comes to the vines). The vast majority of this team are extremely local, coming from within a 20-kilometre radius of the château, and once they join the team, few ever leave. Much has changed over Pinto’s many years working these vines – offering an on-the-ground view of viticultural trends. He remembers a time when they would rip out hedges and trees to make room for vines, focused more on yield, now coming full-circle to reinstate the biodiversity that existed before. Today there’s more appreciation of the craft and calling of a vigneron, or vine-grower – a return to traditional vineyard management.  Looking at pruning, for example, Pinto explains how there are no set rules: “Each person prunes a vine as they wish,” he tells me. They respond to each vine, its needs, looking at the sap flow and thinking about its long-term future, rather than just the next season. It’s very Simonit&Sirch in approach – although Pinto is bemused by such a suggestion; for him, it’s how he learnt to understand vines. “All it is, effectively, is that we think,” says Caillard. “It’s always existed; it’s just that we had forgotten it a little.” The challenge is teaching this sort of instinctive approach to managing a vineyard. “I don’t follow a recipe anymore,” says Pinto. It’s not just knowledge he is trying to pass on to his team, but “a way of thinking”, he says, one that inevitably comes from experience, from making mistakes and learning from them. There’s a drastic difference between studying the theory from a book, and standing in front of a vine, secateurs in hand. Of course, the idea of making mistakes when the wine commands the reputation (and price) that Lafite does might seem daunting – but it’s this that sets top addresses apart. Lafite’s scrupulous approach to quality, declassifying any fruit that doesn’t meet its very high standards, is a luxury that not all producers can afford. For Pinto, it’s this dedication to quality and long-term view that has kept him at Lafite all these years. There are plenty of properties that will rip vines out once they reach a certain age, all in the name for better crop loads, but at Lafite, the philosophy is to see “how far we can take the vine”, nurturing parcels into old age. His work might be cyclic, following the vine’s yearly progression, but there are changes every year – an effort to constantly evolve and improve. This, perhaps, is what – for me – is most interesting about Lafite. It’s not just the finesse and elegance of its pinpoint Grand Vin that sets this estate apart, but the way in which it has quietly been changing the way Bordeaux works, pushing forward in its pursuit of excellence. For over a decade, they’ve had Manuela Brando leading their Research & Development; talking to her is fascinating, with trials on everything from biodynamics, rootstocks and treatments to umbrella-like covers as an alternative way to combat mildew. If successful, these trials are transferred to the wider vineyard – with training that means the team never stops learning. Just the other day, Pinto tells me, they had a session on agroforestry – something that he’s clearly fascinated by. Pinto seems relaxed, joking lightly with us, but is also quietly serious when it comes to his work, knowing that every decision they make in the vineyard is critical to the quality of the wine that eventually emerges from the cellar. “Every decision has an impact,” echoes Caillard – “and, in fact, nothing is simple.” Difficult it might be, but Pinto is pleased with the progression he has seen over the years. “You can feel the terroir a bit more again,” he says. The shift to organic, re-introduction of hedgerows and trees to the vineyard, which in turn has brought an array of fauna – butterflies and ladybirds, for example, has transformed the property. As an apiarist, he’s acutely aware of the wildflowers that now blossom and abundant bees they attract. At the end of the day, however, there’s no wizardry, he suggests, to what they do – it’s simple: “We respect the vines a bit more.” With the gloss of an estate like Lafite, a First Growth whose reputation is so immense, it’s easy to forget the work that happens behind the scenes. But, as Caillard knows all too well, “You cannot achieve anything technical without the people; people are key to everything we do.” People like Pinto, so clearly at one with their calling, the place and vines, are what make truly great wine – separating the excellent and exceptional. As our conversation draws to a close, Pinto returns back to his team, his stocky frame receding down the row of vines and weathered face turned once more to the bright sunshine, as deeply rooted in this terroir as the Cabernet Sauvignon that surrounds him. Browse all current listings of Ch. Lafite Rothschild, or read more about Bordeaux

As we continue to take you behind the scenes at Bordeaux’s top addresses, our latest feature shines a light on Ch. Lafite Rothschild. We caught up with one of its vineyard team, a vigneron who has dedicated over 30 years of his life to the First Growth’s vines

Taking you behind the scenes at Ch. Lafite Rothschild to talk to one of the Bordeaux First Growth’s vineyard workers

The call of the vine – Ch. Lafite Rothschild

The call of the vine: Ch. Lafite Rothschild

I am too disorganised to call myself a collector, but I often find myself thinking about the multiple meanings of collecting. I have a room full of books left unread from one year to the next, whose mute reproach I feel every time I am in their presence. I have half a dozen radios, from Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper’s folding Brionvega TS502 to a Danish-made Beolit 707 from Bang & Olufsen, with its slide rule tuning device. I have a manual typewriter.  Most of us accumulate such random clutter. These were never possessions that were primarily about being useful – the Brionvega and the Beolit have long since been supplanted by a bluetooth speaker and a smartphone. They represent my membership of the design tribe.  The books carry other layers of meaning. My five years at university are on one shelf. The traces of the eight years I have spent writing a just-completed biography of Boris Iofan – Josef Stalin’s preferred architect – are spelled out in the titles of the books on another shelf. The typewriter was inherited from my father and it serves to remind me of childhood. The closest that I come to having a collection that a serious collector might acknowledge is in my chairs: a Rover chair that Ron Arad salvaged from a car, a Gio Ponti Superlegera, an Eames Lounger, a Harry Bertoia, George Sowden’s Palace chair from the 1983 Memphis collection and a deconstructed armchair designed by Rei Kawakubo. On a larger or smaller scale, humans develop complex relationships with their possessions that can go from the professionalism of full-blown collecting, to the casual significance of a row of junk shop finds on a mantlepiece. They can tell us a lot about ourselves. Marina Warner’s guide to the house in Hampstead, now run as a museum, in which Sigmund Freud spent the last year of his life, offers an arresting insight into the significance that collecting had for him. She describes the ranks of ancient bronze, ceramic and marble figures parading across the desk that Freud brought with him to London from Vienna where he no longer felt safe due to Nazi occupation in 1938. Certainly, they are beautiful, and mostly they are precious. Thanks to their association with Freud, even the few that have been established as 20th-century forgeries will have become valuable. Some are almost 4,000 years old and reflect the religious and political practices of the distant past. Others, such as Freud’s art deco cigar case, come less freighted with history. But as Warner says, “they were also tools of thought, the kitchen utensils of his imagination”.   The batterie de cuisine of psychoanalysis included Egyptian coffin masks from the Roman period, Chinese jade and gold brooches, Roman glass, a 2,500-year-old sphinx, sarcophagus lids, Babylonian cylinder seals and Egyptian heart scarabs, as well as a 19th-century neck rest from New Guinea, modern metal porcupines, and Balinese figures. The pieces in pride of place on his desk, placed in apparently random order, were his special favourites, a tiny fraction of his collection that had become permanent fixtures. From time to time, Freud made space for a few new acquisitions to get a look in. “A collection to which there are no new additions is really dead,” he told his biographer Ernest Jones. After a short interval, most of the new things would be moved into the glass-fronted cabinets positioned around his study, where they were placed in more organised groups than those standing on his desk. Greek sculptures went on a shelf together. A cluster of representations of the Egyptian god Horus were grouped on another.  In Freud’s lifetime, the collection was continually changing. Before his move to London, he toured Vienna’s antiquities dealers almost every week on the look-out for new finds. He was ready to exchange pieces for items he could not afford to buy, and was generous in gifting pieces to friends and pupils he thought would appreciate them. Freud also had no qualms about buying items that came on the market in questionable circumstances, in particular, from the unofficial excavations (sometime after 1906) at a Roman fort in Hungary.   Despite the important part it played in his life, Freud wrote very little about collecting. The nearest that he came to spelling out what drove his interest in fragments of ancient sculpture, was when he compared his own exploration of the unconscious minds of his patients to an archaeological excavation of an ancient city. “The psychoanalyst, like the archaeologist, must uncover layer after layer of the patient’s psyche before coming to the deepest, most valuable treasures.”  Freud was known to share his dining table with choice specimens to act as companions during a meal. “I must always have an object to love”, he confessed to his colleague and rival Carl Jung. When he was writing his book The Interpretation of Dreams in 1895, Freud spent the summer at Schloss Bellevue outside Vienna. He took a selection of what he called “my old grubby gods who take part in the works as paperweights for the manuscripts” with him.  Before Freud left Austria for England in 1938, his desk, his consulting room, and his study at Berggasse 19 were photographed by Edmund Engelman. Engelman’s 150 images helped Freud’s architect son Ernst to transpose the desk and its contents from a dark back room in a Viennese apartment to a sunlit Hampstead villa.  Like most collectors, Freud could never limit himself to a single field. Ronald Lauder the former MoMA chairman, for example, is known for the collection of Viennese modernism that forms the basis for his own museum, the Neue Galerie in New York. He also collects (in depth) in 15 other fields with little apparent connection between them. Lauder is fascinated by the work of the Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata. He has a collection of arms and armour going back to The Crusades, and another of World War Two memorabilia. He owns some of Egon Schiele’s finest works, as well as various 18th-century French artworks. Fellow collector Rolf Fehlbaum (head of Vitra) has one of the largest collections of modern chairs in the world, and gave Frank Gehry his first European commission to design a gallery for it, but he is equally fascinated by toy robots manufactured in Japan since 1937. He calls them tiny kinetic sculptures. Where possible, he acquires their original packaging too. Perhaps the best way to understand the psychology of collecting is to see it as a spectrum. At one end, it is about order and control. In a messy and uncontrollable universe, a collection offers at least a semblance of certainty. A collection of this kind is based on provenance, completeness and authenticity. An over-restored vintage Bugatti is less desirable to a collector than one in original condition.  Every previous owner, every detail of its making forms part of its record. A red Olivetti typewriter designed by Ettore Sottsass that once belonged to David Bowie was sold at Sotheby’s for US$65,000. You can buy one (that hasn’t been owned by Bowie) for US$750, which is still a lot of money for a piece of obsolete technology. Some collectors attempt to make patterns from the things that they acquire or, like jigsaw puzzlers, set out to complete a picture by locating every piece of a set. Some try to document the evolution of a species whether the subject of their interest is biscuit tins or the eggs of a particular type of bird. Some forms of collecting require the active engagement of the collector. Wildflowers need to be picked and dried quickly before they are pressed into a book. Butterfly collectors used macabre methods such as poison jars, or squeezing the thorax, to dispatch their prey without causing so much distress that they risk damaging delicate wings. At the other end of the spectrum, the accumulation of stuff by people who die alone in homes overwhelmed by stacks of ancient newspapers and tins of cat food, is a kind of sickness. It’s a condition that can overwhelm even the most celebrated of artists. In the last 17 years of his life, Andy Warhol filled a succession of cardboard boxes with a seemingly random accumulation of objects: taxi receipts, a vinyl Ramones single signed by Joey Ramone, a piece of an ancient, mummified foot, pastel-coloured corsets and a selection of metal dentures. Every time he had a full box, it was sealed and shipped off to storage in a warehouse in New Jersey. A typical box has 400 objects in it, some have as many as 1,200. Items in them include a piece of Caroline Kennedy’s wedding cake – Warhol seems to have been a regular guest at Kennedy weddings. He showed up 20 minutes after the wedding ceremony for Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger had started, in the company of Grace Jones. He was in black leather, and wearing two wigs; she had on a huge green fur hat.   Warhol’s boxes are a collection of the uncollectable and the uncontrollable, which, thanks to the resources of the Andy Warhol Foundation, has been tamed after six years of work by a dedicated group of archivists and cataloguers. The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has aestheticised the cardboard boxes. They sit on back-lit shelves in the museum to suggest that this is not a random collection of trash that Warhol never looked at, but, in the view of the museum, is in fact a time-based art piece, comprising at least 500,000 objects that took 30 years to complete. It presents a considerably less impressive sight than British Regency period architect Sir John Soane’s museum. The architect of the Bank of England put as much effort into adapting his Lincoln’s Inn Fields house (and subsequently the two adjoining houses) to display his Hogarth paintings, a sarcophagus and his architectural models, as he did to accumulating the collection itself. The Nobel prize-winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk’s novel, The Museum of Innocence is an eloquent exploration of the hoarding end of the collecting spectrum. What initially appears to be an account of a doomed love affair, quickly reveals itself as an exploration of the meaning of collecting. The story’s main protagonist Kemal starts acquiring things when his relationship with his lover Füsun is going well. When she drops an earring, he finds it and puts it to one side. As Füsun falls out of love with him, Kemal begins an increasingly desperate accumulation of objects that record their relationship. He picks up each of the cigarettes that she smokes. When she has stopped seeing him altogether, Kemal starts hanging around at her parents’ house and stealing pieces of cutlery that she might have used.  What makes Pamuk’s book particularly remarkable is that he acquired a house in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district that had belonged to a Greek merchant in the Ottoman era, and transformed it into a physical Museum of Innocence. It is, of course, very far from innocent; everything inside it is a lovingly created fiction. The first thing that you see once you get inside, is a wall covered with 4,213 cigarette ends, each of them carefully annotated in Pamuk’s neat handwriting, with imaginary details of the time and place they were smoked. The rest of the house is full of equally carefully fabricated objects from cosmetics to movie posters that reflect Pamuk’s vision of the modernising Turkey of the 1970s. “I think getting attached to objects happens in traumatic times and love is a trauma,” Pamuk once said. “Perhaps when they are in trouble, people hoard things.”  When Pamuk gave me a tour of his museum, he told me about meeting Warhol’s archivist, and expressed his reservations about the significance of the boxes in Pittsburgh. “Hoarding objects reaches the level of collecting only when there is a story that unites them,” he said. But that is a novelist criticising another, less narrative art form. While Freud’s desk in Hampstead was always useable, if overcrowded, the desk in fashion designer Paul Smith’s office in Covent Garden is completely overwhelmed with a snowdrift of collected objects that sweeps over an office chair, down onto the floor, and back up to the shelves that line every wall. There are stacks of books and magazines, cameras and mountains of vintage cycling jerseys. There is an i-Mac computer, a gift from Jony Ive that Smith has never used. Computers aren’t Smith’s thing. In any case, it’s too late now, short of purging half the contents of the room: there is no way to get near it. There are toy tin cars, collections of bottles from Moroccan markets, a pink bicycle and a lot of rabbits. “I once said in an interview that seeing a rabbit brings me luck, and they haven’t stopped pouring in ever since,” explains Smith. Collecting began, as did so many things in Smith’s career, with his early enthusiasm for cycling. Growing up in Nottingham in the 1950s, there was a newsagent which occasionally had a copy of L’Equipe, which would portray the heroes of the Tour de France in their yellow jerseys in colour on the cover, but in sepia inside. He bought the magazine, fascinated by the images, even if he couldn’t read it. “I can remember once saying, ‘I really like Jacques Anquetil’ to my father, which baffled him, since none of our family had ever been abroad. I saved my pocket money so that I could upgrade the gears on my bike from Simplex to Campagnolo. The box it came in was as important to me as the gear itself.”  What attracted Smith to the Campagnolo box, along with stamps and matchboxes which he has in large numbers – not just in his office but at his Nottingham HQ where he has an archivist trying to make sense of it all – is the way that designers can say so much in such a tiny space. He showed me a Japanese book of matches produced for a Tokyo nightclub in the 1970s. “It so clearly says it’s ‘contemporary’. You can hear the jazz already.”  Despite the huge assortment of assembled objects, Smith is reluctant to describe himself as a collector. “I just have a large quantity of the same things,” he says, matter of factly. “In my head, a collector is someone who selects an item or a subject. They collect them because they know a lot about them. Maybe I have a little knowledge about cycling jerseys.  In the early 1980s, on my first trips to Japan and India, I just got a bit carried away. I bought lots of Japanese furniture. In India, for some reason, I bought 15 wardrobes, and a piece of furniture that doubled as a staircase with drawers.” Smith had them all sent home on the Trans-Siberian Express.  He suggests that his is a collection that has found him. “Things collect me,” he says. “For some reason I started to be sent things, and they still keep coming.” There is an individual who regularly sends Smith artefacts that come unwrapped but covered in postage stamps. Others send him letters, toys, books and even ancient packets of razor blades. One visitor took careful photographs of his office, and later sent him a precisely detailed model of his office, complete with its chaotic contents. Smith’s London home, where he lives with his wife Pauline, is much calmer. “The house is hers. I do have one room for my stuff, but it’s mostly at the office that I get to look at things.” In 1996, patron of the arts and barrister Jill Ritblat gave the V&A Museum the largest single donation of clothes in its history, more than 1,000 items. There are ski outfits in postmodern pastel shades from the 1980s, and challenging Japanese experiments from Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake, as well as couture from Dior and Saint Laurent. There is work by Alexander McQueen, Biba, Mary Quant, and Christian Lacroix, Emanuel Ungaro and Victor Edelstein, and an evening outfit produced by a dressmaker based on an idea of Ritblat’s own design.  The early days of British fashion from the 1960s are represented by Foale and Tuffin, and Zandra Rhodes, and from the 1980s by Margaret Howell and Katharine Hamnett. There is tailoring from Tommy Nutter and work by Giorgio Armani. It is by no means a complete account of contemporary fashion, but it is certainly extensive, and like the personal wardrobe that it is, combines some very special pieces made for family occasions, with more everyday wear. The connecting thread of Ritblat’s collection is Ritblat herself. These were all pieces that she had bought to wear. They were not chosen like stamps, or old masters, or celadon vases to make a self-conscious collection, but were the result of a continuing sequence of choices over time. Taken together they are a reflection of her life as an English woman of a certain background, at a particular time in the country’s history. “I never saw it as a collection, it was more like my diary, though I have never had time to write a diary. Each piece brings back memories of when I wore it,” says Ritblat. She made her first donation to the V&A at the end of 1996, but kept back the things that she wanted to be able to go on using, and they formed the core of a donation to the Design Museum of another 400 items in 2013. Ritblat is ambivalent about fashion. As a child she was somewhat self-conscious about being dressed by her mother, who had studied fashion herself. She was relieved to be able to assume the camouflage of the complex uniform rituals of an English public school for girls in the 1950s. “I loved my school uniform at Roedean; we were expected to change our clothes four times a day, as chic as anything. Scratchy afternoon dresses, regulation school loafers, very nice blazers and pleated skirts.” As a student barrister, she found herself adopting the formal uniform of the legal profession, but then as a married woman began to build a wardrobe that reflected the life that she was leading. Later, when she was making her own choices, she was early to discover Miuccia Prada. “What you pick out is based on whether it suits you and on the zeitgeist,” she explains. Smith, Heseltine and Ritblat represent three very different approaches to collecting. For Smith, the unruly mountain of things in his office, is, like the collection on Sigmund Freud’s desk, part of the tools of his imagination, a source of imagery and ideas for his work as a designer. It’s also a means of establishing his personality. Heseltine’s garden is an investment of time, resources and creativity in the remaking of a place that speaks to the future using living organisms that will outlive us all. Ritblat’s clothes are a record of the full life of an individual. All of these collections provide insights into unique people, their lives and times. In their different ways all three reflect on the nature of collecting, and its ability to be a creative activity in itself. In a world in which technology threatens to abolish the material world altogether, objects have not lost their allure. Their physical condition marks the passing of time in ways that pixels and code cannot do. Collecting is the means all of us have to create histories of our times, and even more, of ourselves. This article was originally published in FONDATA, Issue Two. 

In order to explore the mindset of the collector, Deyan Sudjic shines a light on the collected objects of Sigmund Freud and Andy Warhol, and speaks to three British collectors to better understand what it is that makes collecting such a vital part of the human experience.

Exploring the mindset of the collector and why the act is a vital part of the human experience, with a focus on Sigmund Freud and Andy Warhol

FONDATA: Exploring the art of collecting 

 I Collect, Therefore I Am

There are myriad fascinating twists and turns in Scotch whisky’s long and storied past. From dizzying boom times to disastrous downturns, the distilling landscape – and the major players within it – has been redrawn countless times. 
There's one era, however, that is legendary – whisky's "golden age". Between the 1950s and '80s, some of the industry's most nuanced single malts were crafted. These are now widely regarded as the greatest ever released, which is reflected in the eyewatering secondary market prices – should they ever appear on the auction block. 
These perfectly imperfect, characterful and wonderfully unique liquids, produced at distilleries that no longer exist, or exist in a very different way today, will never be bottled again – making them real unicorns for whisky collectors. 
To understand what makes them so special, it is important to first appreciate just how little liquid exists from this time. The single malt whisky market was unfathomably small before and during this period and entirely dwarfed by blends. A mere fraction of a distiller’s finest liquid would be bottled as a single malt. These minuscule quantities were also made via practices that are now lost in the annals of history, making them more desirable for collectors. 
For context, Scotch whisky was largely made as it always had been until the 1950s, drawing on traditional methods that had been passed down for centuries. Distillers would use their sight, smell and taste to determine when a liquid was ready to cask, and later, bottle. Whisky-making took mastery and patience – something producers could ill afford when demands on the industry intensified and there was a concerted push to produce more for less during the 1970s. While many producers made these changes around the same time, they didn’t all happen at once, creating a wonderfully varied time capsule of whiskies. 
The 1960s – when some of these great bottlings were produced – was sandwiched in between two vastly different decades. Production in the ‘50s was steady but small. By the 1970s, however, distillers – both large and small – were forced to increase their output by almost double, and names that had fallen silent were reawakened once more as global demand for Scotch whisky grew. 
Sadly, by the mid-1970s, the tide started to turn. The bountiful supply of whisky was not met by demand, resulting in a devastating whisky loch in the 1980s and some of the most difficult years the Scotch whisky industry has ever endured. Swathes of distilleries were forced to close, including the now-legendary Port Ellen and Brora – both of which shut their doors in 1983. This depression continued well into the 1990s with a further 20 casualties (of these, only three ever reopened), before the pendulum finally swung back in the early 2000s when the seemingly unquenchable thirst for single malt whiskies, that is still in full force today, began. 
From the 1950s onwards, holders of the increasingly frayed purse strings sought to reduce inefficiencies in the traditional, labour-intensive practice of whisky-making – which defined the golden age. With the introduction of modern, more mechanised, safer processes, it was a new dawn for Scotch whisky.  During this period in history, every single stage of whisky production was “streamlined”. The money men closed floor maltings, introduced distillers’ yeast, reduced fermentation times, installed semi-lauter tuns, made the switch to indirect-fired stills, replaced worm tubs with shell-and-tube condensers, and introduced ex-Bourbon barrels. By the end of the 1970s, you could almost count on one hand the number of distillers who retained traditional methods. 
It’s important to remember that tweaking one of these processes can alter the entire flavour profile of a whisky – just ask Glenfarclas who reverted back to direct-firing their stills after their new-make spirit lost its characteristically heavy and oily profile during their ill-fated flirtation with steam in 1981. And yet, in many instances, producers permanently changed many of these processes. Traditional practices and know-how that varied slightly at every distillery began to be outsourced as they turned to professional maltsters and installed modern, industrial-scale equipment that increased efficiencies and consistency but in some cases compromised the craft and character of the final spirit profile. 
“Every distillery has its own story and evolution of style,” whisky authority Serge Valentin explains, “their own ups and its downs.” 
Valentin was ahead of his time when he started collecting single malt Scotch, almost exclusively from Old Clynelish and Brora. He couldn’t possibly have predicted what his passion project of buying as many different bottlings as he could “simply because they were [his] favourites”  would become. 
Both Clynelish and Brora – as it would be known – produced heavily peated malt during the late 1960s and early ’70s. Bottlings from this time until 1983, when Brora became a victim of the whisky loch and fell silent, have become highly collectable in recent years. Old Clynelish bottlings, (Valentin’s favourites), which are robustly distinctive with aromas of scented wax and heather, are astonishingly rare and modern collectors clamber over one another to get their hands on these golden-age gems for many times the price Valentin would have paid. 
Stephen Rankin has been fortunate to sample whiskies from one of the most remarkable single malt libraries in the world at Gordon & MacPhail. His team is able to pull out liquids from what he calls “pre-evolutions within distilleries” thanks to his family’s foresight to buy barrels from cash-strapped producers who were selling their stocks for survival. The Elgin-based independent bottler had the luxury and fortitude to bide their time and store casks that would otherwise have been bottled young or blended. He has a particular affection for single malts from what was Milton Distillery, known since 1951 as Strathisla, which he describes as a “great example of a whisky that has the flavours of this past era.” 
Independent bottlers like Gordon & MacPhail played a vital role in bringing many of these now-legendary whiskies into the world. One man in particular, Silvano Samaroli, was responsible for bottling single malts that are now widely regarded as some of the greatest ever released.  
Rome-based Samaroli released his first Scotch whisky series in 1968 in the form of the now-iconic, dumpy Cadenhead bottlings – making him the first independent Scotch whisky bottler outside the United Kingdom. Today, Samaroli’s Bowmore, Glen Garioch, and  Springbank releases are held in especially high regard and his  Laphroaig single malts from 1967 and 1970 are in a league of their own. 
“The late 1960s to the ’80s is definitely one of the most remarkable periods,” Samaroli’s Daniele Liberati says, “largely due to the appearance of certain expressions for the first time.”  
“We started to propose different bottlings, moving away from the classic blends and official distillery releases,” Liberati adds. These included single-cask expressions, numbered bottlings and cask-strength releases, all of which are commonplace today but were revolutionary at the time.
 
In recent years, a handful of new distillers have turned to old whisky-making practices in an attempt to recapture some of its magic. Fledgling Speyside distiller Dunphail, for instance, has faithfully – and at great cost – installed traditional floor maltings, direct-fired stills and wooden, open washbacks where fermentation times are considerably longer than the industry average, to produce a fruit-forward, oily, medium-bodied Speyside whisky. Today, however, these traditional methods are always adopted in conjunction with modern practices in order to achieve all the desirable characteristics of yore in a more efficient way.   While there is the temptation to look back on this era with a rose-tinted view, as there are undeniably some exceptional bottlings from this time, it is wrong to believe that all whisky produced in the golden age was of the same standard. Whisky-making 40 to 50 years ago was imperfect, there was very little consistency in quality and for one good cask, a distiller would likely have 10 or 20 bad ones that never saw the light of day.  It’s also important to appreciate that many of these modernisations were vital to guarantee the safety of distillery workers as several stages in production were unstable. These advancements have also resulted in unprecedented consistency. While nuance and singularity might have been sacrificed, it’s now incredibly hard to find a bad dram.   As times evolve – as they inevitably do – it’s highly unlikely whisky from Scotland’s golden age will ever not be considered precious.    Browse all Scotch whisky or read more Editorial

Some of the most exceptional single malts ever released were produced in an era affectionately known as “the golden age”. Bottlings from this time are painfully scarce and have gained near-mythic status among whisky enthusiasts. Holly Motion explores why whiskies from this age are so precious

Exploring the golden age of malt whisky and its most coveted bottlings that are widely considered some of the greatest single malts ever released.

The golden age of malt whisky

The golden age of whisky

Sauternes might be the most distinctive wine on the planet. Its combination of power, unctuosity and aromatic complexity is unparalleled. These extraordinary wines consistently compete with the finest wines made anywhere in the world. But unlike most wines of the world, Sauternes’s journey from vine to bottle is a tumultuous affair. Typically, over half the crop is sacrificed in order to reach the heady levels of complexity the region is famous for. The journey from berry to bottle is one of the most fascinating molecular transformations and one of wine’s greatest miracles. Bérénice Lurton of Ch. Climens describes the process “as a sacrifice, death and resurrection all in one. It is like the rising of the phoenix,” she says. “Within the process of the grapes’ destruction is the ability for transcendence and transmutation into something else, something beautiful.” Every Sauternes vintage is a rollercoaster ride of unknowns – one that would leave most vignerons at the end of their tether. “All the rules you know about wine production: forget about them,” Lorenzo Pasquini – who recently arrived at Ch. d’Yquem – says. The grape’s reaction to its terroir, to humidity, to the process of noble rot: it’s all a gamble and, often, a gamble you lose. No one understands this game of chance better than Bérénice Lurton. The crop at Ch. Climens has been decimated in the last few years. She hasn’t made a sweet wine of any volume for five vintages in a row. Frost has become the biggest threat of late, completely wiping out the most recent 2021 crop as well as 2017. The severity of the damage to the vines in 2017 encroached on 2018 too, where coulure (poor fruit-set) and mildew also dwindled production to zero. In 2019 it was the attack of the drosophila fly that destroyed almost the entire crop, and in 2020 it was hail’s turn to wipe out production. No one in Sauternes is left untouched by the risks involved. Once – and if – your crop survives, there are several key elements to a successful vintage in Sauternes. Pasquini thinks it is best to think of Sauternes as having two ripening phases per season. The first is like any other wine region: the maturation of the grapes. The varied terroir here plays its role. The gravel and clay soils at Yquem, for instance, are vital in reducing the vigour of the vines, naturally producing small bunches of concentrated fruit. Pasquini remembers being taken into the vineyard to try the grapes when he first arrived at Yquem. “It was just incredible how tasty they were,” he says. This concentration is an essential part to the finest Sauternes. At Ch. Doisy-Daëne and Climens, it is Barsac’s limestone soil, which brings added florality, salinity, freshness and aromatic complexity to the final wine. This first phase of ripening will determine the style of vintage (rather than the final quality). Lurton describes how 1997, 2002, ’04 and ’07 were all dull summers in Bordeaux; while not great for the region’s reds, they were incredible vintages for Sauternes. The cooler temperatures produced a brighter, more acidic style with great tension. The development of botrytis following this was a great counterbalance, adding richness, intensity and aromatic complexity. “But it doesn’t have to be a cool vintage in Sauternes to be a great one,” says Lurton. Dry, sunny years like 2005, ’09 and ’15 produced a richer style of wine – with botrytis only adding to the opulence and richness of the year. Once the grapes have reached maturity, and only then, do vignerons pray for botrytis to arrive. “The botrytis plays two roles,” says Ch. Doisy-Daëne’s Jean-Jacques Dubourdieu. “Most famously it is known to digest the skin of the berry and this allows for the water evaporation from the berry, and therefore concentrates the sugar in the grape.” But Dubourdieu believes its second role is just as important, but less well known. “The botrytis causes a chemical reaction in the berry. As a way to fight the botrytis, the berry produces precursor aromatics in the grape. Depending on the maturity of the berry when the botrytis arrives, this directly affects the concentration of aromatic precursors produced.” The magic number for Dubourdieu is a potential alcohol level of 13%. “If the berry is at this level of maturity, it can produce up to 50 times the number of aromatic precursors than less mature grapes.” Once the botrytis sets in, the vignerons then pray (and there is a lot of praying) for another dry period in which the grapes can further concentrate under the effects of botrytis. This is where the wind – a key feature of Sauternes’s microclimate – becomes vital. The wind can quickly concentrate the grapes – but, depending on the varying exposures and terroirs within the region, different styles of botrytis aromatics and flavours develop adding even more complexity to the wine. “Having more botrytis grapes to choose from, creates more flavour complexity in the final blend,” says Pasquini. This is, in many ways, Yquem’s greatest asset – with 113 hectares under vine. In some vintages, quality botrytis might only be successful in one part of the vineyard, but in a great vintage there is opportunity to blend the different botrytis styles from across different microclimates for a more complex expression. This is what brings such variation in style from château to château, and vintage to vintage. Production in the last few years has been on a worrying sliding scale. The sacrifices made seem to be greater with every vintage. For a winegrowing region whose fortunes are so much in the hands of Mother Nature, is Sauternes at risk? Is there a danger that we will lose the unique conditions necessary to make these unique sweet wines? For Dubourdieu, the warming climate has, on the contrary, brought many benefits. Firstly, the grapes much more often reach 13 degrees potential alcohol before botrytis sets in, meaning there are more years in which he can craft “great” wine. His biggest concern, however, is that the climate is pushing the onset of botrytis later and later. “The 2020 is a perfect example of this,” he explains. “The grapes had reached significant maturity by the end of August, but botrytis didn’t arrive until mid-October.” The dry, warm, sunny September held off any onset of botrytis. “The danger of this is if botrytis comes too late, there won’t be enough power from the sun to concentrate the berries through the all-important evaporation process. Also there is the risk of the acidity dropping too.” Beyond mid-October, if no botrytis has formed the whole vintage could potentially be lost. Fortunately this hasn’t yet been the case, but 2020 came close – and it could become more of a threat in the future. “For now, the issue is quantity, not quality,” says Dubourdieu. “The increased levels of mildew in the summer, the hail and the spring frosts – these are our concerns.” Sauternes has had a long line of great vintages, however volumes have been decimated. Whatever the appetite in the market is, there is very little Sauternes available from the most recent vintages. There’s often a question over the appeal of these luscious wines – but Sauternes production is so limited that its audience can only ever be small. Yquem, Climens and Doisy-Daëne all describe themselves as guardians of this unique craft, rather than vignerons feeling commercially pressured to produce a drier style in greater volume. They know that for many wine enthusiasts drinking Sauternes is not a regular occurrence – but they want it to be one of the most memorable wine experiences of their lives when they do. And that’s the magic of these wines. Despite the low volumes, Pasquini, Dubourdieu and even Lurton are optimistic about Sauternes’s future. Quality has never been better and they’re in a long-term game: they look at yields over 20-year, not five-year, cycles. There is a new buzz coming from a rise in tourism in the region, while the spirits industry’s recent interest in Sauternes barrels for cask finishing is yet another alternative income (with old barrels selling for five or six times more than they bought them for), not to mention the publicity – bringing Sauternes to a whole new range of potential consumers. Unfortunately, 2021 is looking like another miniscule vintage for the region and that’s even before botrytis has arrived. But not even this dampens Dubourdieu’s mood: “If you want to control everything, you certainly wouldn’t be a vigneron. As a vigneron you learn to live with uncertainty.” For Lurton, “Living with such uncertainty keeps your feet on the ground.” As the region continues to develop, their experience of uncertainty and necessary sacrifice, Lurton believes, means Sauternes “will never lose its soul”. Discover our current Sauternes listings or read more Editorial

Producing Sauternes is a noble venture – one that often brings more risks than rewards. Gavin Smith talks to three of the region’s leading producers about the perils of crafting the world’s most sought-after sweet wines – and why it’s worth it

Exploring the perils of crafting the world’s most sought-after sweet wines with three leading Sauternes producers, Chx Climens , D’Yquem and Doisy-Daëne.

Sauternes – the great sacrifice

Sauternes: the great sacrifice

Domus Vitae

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Your catalogue item will be archived. Are you sure you want to continue?

Your catalogue items will be archived. Are you sure you want to continue?

Before you request delivery, you can adjust the quantity for each item in your selection below.

* At time of sale a 15% trading fee will be deducted from the final sale price.

Total estimated value*'

The fixed custom price you wish to sell each item for.

Split into {caseSize} individual {bottleSize}cl bottles.

Title

shows all the items you currently store with us. These items can be sold.

Available for sale — items stored with {name} eligible to be listed on the marketplace.

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This item is at Vinfolio, available for storage or shipping. For more information on shipping and handling visit vinfolio.com/shipping

This item is at FINE+RARE HOME Hong Kong, available for delivery or local pickup. Most Hong Kong deliveries can be made within 3 working days, an exact date will be available when arranging delivery. International deliveries have longer lead-times, please contact us for details.

Wines sold en primeur will be released from the producer after bottling, typically 18 months after the so-called campaign ends. Upon arrival your wine will be stored at Vinfolio in our temperature-controlled warehouse until you decide to take delivery.

We will source this item at the guaranteed price from our network of suppliers and arrange expedited shipment to FINE+RARE.
 The lead-time depends on many variables, but 2-4 weeks is typical for expedited sourcing.
 Once your order is confirmed, we'll keep you updated on its ETA.
 Every item is checked on arrival by our expert team, with photographs available on request (please note that charges may apply).

When a wine is on "pre-arrival", it means that we have a confirmed order on the bottles from our supplier and we are simply waiting for the winery or distributor to ship the wine to us. The delivery timeframe for pre-arrival wines varies significantly, depending on where the wine is coming from. We will notify you once they arrive at our warehouse and, at that point, you can decide to arrange shipping or list them for sale.

Domus Vitae

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