Vineyards Magazine

The sun has just started to light up the vineyard and the harvesting teams are already busily gathering the first few bunches that will become the estate’s reds. One by one, the bunches are placed in 15-kilogram crates and, in under an hour, they will be escorted to the cellar, where they will be selected for a second time on the sorting table before passing through the optical sorter and embarking on their journey to become part of the Ornellaia legacy.

“The harvest is always a wonderful and crucial time,” remarks Marco Balsimelli, Production Director at Ornellaia, “but every time of the year is important in the vineyard. 2024 has been both positive and challenging. Between March and June, frequent rainfall replenished the water reserves, while every vineyard parcel required constant care, which naturally is what we gave them.”

The summer arrived suddenly at the end of June, giving Bolgheri two months of sunshine and dry weather, which provided optimal conditions for the vines. “The arrival of the hot weather enabled us to reverse a difficult situation, laying the foundations for a fantastic vintage. In mid July and early August especially, we had 20 days of very intense heat,” explains Balsimelli. “This context of slight water stress allowed the vegetative growth to stop and saw the beginning of the actual ripening process with a concentration of sugar, aromas and polyphenols.”

Completing the perfect summer, the microclimate at Ornellaia ensured cool breezy nights for the vineyards with temperatures between 19 and 22 degrees Celsius. Lastly, on August 15, the Italian midsummer holiday, between 10 and 20 millimetres of rain brought relief to the vines. “It was timely because the rain restarted the ripening, giving the grapes just the right profile.”

Lamberto Frescobaldi, President of Frescobaldi, to which Ornellaia belongs, is delighted by the end result. “The grapes were perfectly healthy and ripe upon picking. The Sauvignon Blanc grapes, which were harvested on separate occasions between 12 and 30 August, are already fermenting in the cellar, and now it’s time to continue with the other white grapes as well as our red grapes. Meticulous attention to detail and a dedication to the vineyards – more than 700 hours of manual labour per hectare every years – rewards us with the admirable equilibrium of the vines that never fail to convey the profoundly unique terroir of Ornellaia in sync with the vintage.”

Given that first parcels of Merlot began to be picked in the last few days, the harvest is expected to continue until early October, culminating in the final bunches of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Ornellaia Vendemmia d’Artista project continues to support the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum.

This year’s Vendemmia d’Artista project is concluding with a donation in favour of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Ornellaia estate, with the support of the charity auction organised by Sotheby’s, has donated 325.000 dollars to the Mind’s Eye program, which increases accessibility to art for people who are blind or have low vision through multisensory exploration.  

A series of large formats of Ornellaia Vendemmia d’Artista 2021 La Generosità created by Marinella Senatore, have been sold during a dedicated charity auction organized by Sotheby’s. The Italian artist has used the language of collages and light to interpret the character of the 2021 vintage.

She says: “The sense of care and belonging that is implicit in generosity is the bedrock of what becomes cohabitation. Generosity and cooperation, coexistence and, lastly, participation: these have always been the core concepts of my research. For the labels”, she continues, “I used the collage technique that I love so much and that enables me to organize many details, images, energy flows and thoughts on a piece of paper. The labels were conceived as a set of collages, which describes the land, the generosity of its traits, and the relationship between the land, energy and human beings.”

The President Lamberto Frescobaldi remarks “I would like to thank both Sotheby’s, which has been a partner of this project for years, and all the collectors who took part in the auction. We are proud to support Mind’s Eye and to see this project grow year after year, involving more and more people from all over the world.”

Mind’s Eye program is now active in the Guggenheim museums in Venice, New York and Bilbao. Cyra Levenson, Deputy Director, Education and Public Engagement, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, explains: “With Ornellaia’s Global Partnership and support, the Mind’s Eye program is now an international initiative, providing a way to experience the Guggenheim’s one-of-a-kind architectural sites and inspiring collections in the digital space for anyone anywhere. “

Art and wine share a multi-sensorial experience. By donating the funds raised by Vendemmia d’Artista to the Mind’s Eye program, Ornellaia underlines the shared value and importance of having an active stakeholder in today’s cultural and social community.

The online auction organised by Sotheby’s will be held from 7 to 21 September 2023. The proceeds will support the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundationin New York, Venice and Bilbao

Organised by Sotheby’s, the annual charity auction of bottles from the 15th edition of Vendemmia d’Artista will return online from 7 to 21 September.

Double magnums, imperials and the only 9-litre salmanazar will be among the 12 lots. All the bottles are embellished with labels designed by the American artist Joseph Kosuth, who was invited to interpret this edition’s character, namely “La Proporzione” (Proportion).

The auction will provide collectors with the opportunity to secure lots of high artistic and wine significance, while doing a generous gesture. As in previous years since 2019, all profits will go to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s “Mind’s Eye” program, which welcomes and enhances access to the arts for visitors who are blind or have low vision. “We are proud to support this initiative,” comments Giovanni Geddes da Filicaja, CEO of Ornellaia. “Like in art, appreciation of fine wines requires total involvement of the senses. Furthermore, for us, partnering with the Guggenheim Foundation is a way of giving back to the community some of the extraordinary goodwill that nature has bestowed upon us.” These unique bottles are precious for three reasons: their contents, their works of art on the labels and, last but not least, their goal of increasing access to the arts for all visitors.

In 2020, nature and humanity combined to craft a perfect ‘proportion’ of elegance, power and complexity. In order to interpret this correspondence, the leading American conceptual artist and theorist Joseph Kosuth created a set of works based on the word “wine” and a quote from Vitruvius’s De Architectura (3.1.3). The 750ml bottle features the English version of the phrase engraved on the paper. For the 100 double magnums, the etymology of the word “wine” is embossed on the bottle, while each of the unique 10 imperials sees the etymology engraved onto the glass. One branch is accentuated in white and the quote from Vitruvius is translated in the highlighted language or one of its modern descendants: Albanian, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Italian, Hindi, Hebrew, Modern Greek, Irish, German and Armenian. For the salmanazar, the etymology and quote from Vitruvius below are in English and the highlighting applied to the bottle is in platinum.

Joseph Kosuth: “I believe that language is an important part of experiencing everything and that these experiences shape us in a certain way linguistically. The architecture of experience through language was obviously always at work and I believe that Vitruvius was a major resource in understanding a concept like proportion. Proportion is not only visible equilibrium among the elements, but also equilibrium of all the elements that make it a perfect entity of what it represents for the world, thus also shaping it as conception.”