Production, producer, provenance: the “3 P’s” that make a bottle of wine “collector’s”

Production (in volume), producer (and its reputation) and provenance: these are the “3 P’s” that make a bottle a “collector’s” wine. As the British magazine “Decanter” explains, in fact, the number of high-level companies in a given territory is limited, as are their productions, which become rare as the vintage gets older: in this sense, the reason for the success of the labels of Burgundy is precisely in the numbers, very small, even if compared to the top producers of Bordeaux, which in volume are closer to the great labels of the Belpaese, such as Masseto, Sassicaia, Solaia, Ornellaia, but also Brunello Biondi Santi or Soldera Case Basse in Montalcino, or the Barolo of Giuseppe Mascarello and Bruno Giacosa or the cru of Angelo Gaja. Reputation, on the other hand, is a more nuanced concept, because many producers have built their own in centuries, others have been able to do the same, with good communication strategies, in a few years. The origin, moreover, is fundamental, because even the best wine in the world, if it has been preserved in the basement of an apartment in the city, loses much of its appeal and, in all probability, of its quality.
However, it certainly does not end here, because the desirability of a wine also passes through the denomination of origin, it is enough to think, remaining on the example of Burgundy, to the different quotations of Musigny and Mâcon, or, in the nearest Tuscany, to the distance that separates, in prices and reputation, Brunello di Montalcino and Nobile di Montepulciano, separated geographically by a few tens of kilometers. And then the vintage, because the race to buy, in the most celebrated harvests by international critics, is under everyone’s eyes: remaining on the previous example, 2010, just for Brunello di Montalcino, won scores and palates, seeing the prices skyrocketing in a few months. Finally, the limited editions, like the artist’s labels, which make a wine already rare, if not unavailable: they are a fitting example of the author’s labels of Chateau Mouton Rothschild, signed over the years by the greatest artists of the moment, between which Dalì, Mirò, Chagall, Picasso and Andy Warhol, but also the Artist Harvest of Ornellaia, which declines every year through the vision of a painter or a sculptor, last Shirin Neshat, an Iranian artist who interpreted “The Tension” of the Ornellaia 2016.