In the witty and white foyer of the Cantine Ferrari winery, there’s a permanent exhibition of wine bottles, each of which is exhibited under Perspex, like a museum piece. Each bottle comes from a key moment in Ferrari’s history, such as the one with the presidential letter next to it. Alessandro Lunelli, a third-generation member of the family that owns Ferrari, points out one bottle whose punt is inverted. It makes the bottle look like it’s got a curved glass spike at the bottom. This is not a bottle that can stand on a table. “It was an idea to encourage people to put the bottle in an ice bucket,” says Lunelli.
The foyer also has a permanent exhibition of photographs. One shows the Queen of England. Another features the Pope. And over there is Andy Warhol. The pictures show the dignitaries either visiting the winery or enjoying Ferrari wine.
Ferrari, whose home is Trentino in the northeast of Italy, produces 4.5m bottles of wine, 20% of which are exported. The glamour and the prestige on show here is a long way from the days when Ferrari produced less than a thousand bottles a year, from a region that wasn’t even recognised as Italian, because it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Italian pioneer
The history of Cantine Giulio Ferrari began in 1902 when its eponymous founder returned home to Trento after studying winemaking in France, where he’d also gained experience in Champagne, and realised that his own region was an ideal place for sparkling wine production.
The landscape of Trentino-Alto Adige is one of the most spectacular in Europe, dominated as it is by the Dolomite Mountains, which rise to 3,340 metres and tower over the green valleys far below. Watered by the Adige river, the region becomes a blaze of colour in spring as the many orchard trees burst into bloom. Vines grow all the way to the foothills of the mountain slopes, where the altitude provides the fine acidity that is ideal for sparkling wine.
Historically, the only thing preventing the region from making distinctive sparkling wines was a lack of the ideal grapes and winemaking techniques. But that all changed when Ferrari brought Chardonnay vines from France, planting them in Italy for the first time. He also became the first Italian to introduce the Champagne-style method of winemaking. His production was tiny – just 400 bottles – but by 1906, his wines were winning awards.
Inside the Ferrari museum, Alessandro Lunelli points to an antique disgorging machine, made of solid silver. “Guilio Ferrari was a perfectionist – he worked with the best tools available at the time,” he says.
The company that originally made the equipment have offered to buy it back, but the Lunellis aren’t selling. They consider it part of their heritage – even though their relationship to Ferrari is one of kinship through wine, rather than blood.
Ferrari had no children, and as he grew older, he realised he needed a successor. In 1952 he chose Bruno Lunelli, a friend and owner of a local dry goods store that stocked bottled wine.
This fact, by itself, is an indication of how seriously Lunelli took wine, because the 1950s was a time when wine was a grocery item that was bought in bulk, bottled wine being an extravagance for most people. Despite having five children and no knowledge of winemaking, Lunelli went into debt to buy Ferrari, which he passed to his sons in 1969. One of them, winemaker Mauro, created Italy’s first traditional method rosé.
Like Ferrari before him, Mauro Lunelli was inspired by what he had learned in Champagne, particularly the insight that extended lees-ageing increased complexity. When production moved to a new winery in 1971, Lunelli took the opportunity to leave the first vintage on its lees for five years. A year later, he went further, secretly bottling 5,000 bottles of Chardonnay and hiding them from his siblings for a full eight years. The wines, which were finally revealed in 1980 became the Giulio Ferrari Riserva del Fondatore, now the flagship wine of the house.
It was a good time to be launching a prestige product. Northern Italy had gone through a post-war economic boom that culminated in the 1970s, and pride in locally made goods was rising. In 1978, Italy’s president Alessandro Pertini decreed that Italian wine should be served at state functions, and Ferrari was chosen to replace Champagne.
Another pivotal moment – captured in a famous photograph that now hangs in the Ferrari foyer – came in 1982, when football star Paolo Rossi celebrated Italy’s triumph in the World Cup final by raising a magnum of Ferrari to his lips. From that moment on, Ferrari became the sparkling wine of choice for major celebrations in Italy.
The region
The Italian newspaper La Repubblica once said that Cantine Ferrari was an example of a single company that acted as a leader for a whole area, raising the prosperity of everyone. That’s because Cantine Ferrari dominates the Trentino region, producing about 40% of Trento DOCs wines, and taking in grapes from 500 local producers, whose production is carefully supervised. The families who own the vineyards need to adhere to organic principles, with some vineyards already certified organic and others in the process of converting.
Terroir is only part of the Ferrari story. Notably, all four members of the third generation of Lunellis have serious business credentials. Last year, Matteo Lunelli won an award for Entrepreneur of the Year in the Business Category of the prestigious EY (formerly Ernst & Young) awards. He once worked as a financial analyst for Goldman Sachs in London, only giving up his job after receiving a call from his Uncle Gino, who said: “Do you want to be part of this business?”
Heeding the call, he and his wife packed up their things and went directly to Trento. Matteo Lunelli has been at the helm of the Ferrari business since 2011 and is CEO of the Lunelli Group, which also produces Prosecco Superiore, following the acquisition of 50% of the historic Bisol business; Surgiva, the official mineral water of the Italian Sommelier Association; Segnana grappa; and still wines under the Tenute Lunelli brand in Trentino, Tuscany, and Umbria.
Umbria might seem to be an interesting choice, considering that Sagrantino, the region’s tannic, classic grape, needs plenty of time in barrel and can be a tough sell. Alessandro Lunelli doesn’t seem worried. “What we understand very well is ageing,” he says. “Sagrantino is like a horse – depending on how you treat it, it will either kick you, or win you a race.”
Alessandro, who sits on the board, also brings considerable managerial skill to Ferrari, having begun his career at McKinsey & Co., before working internationally with Unilever. His brother Marcello, now in charge of oenology, honed his skills in South Africa and California, as well as with his uncle Mauro Lunelli. The reward for those efforts came when the judges at the 2015 Champagne & Sparkling Wine World Championships in London not only gave Ferrari gold medals for all nine of the wines it had entered, but also named it Best Producer, ahead of a number of storied Champagne houses. Camilla Lunelli worked at Deloitte Consulting, and in Niger and Uganda with the UN before taking over responsibility for communications and public relations.
Glamour and prestige
Their international experience has taught the Lunellis some invaluable lessons about the way luxury brands are perceived by consumers. As students at Milan’s Bocconi University’s ground-breaking Fashion and Luxury Marketing program are taught, while French brands like Champagne depend for their success on history and heritage and time-tested classics, Italy is all about La Dolce Vita – the art of living well.
This is writ large in the flamboyant cars of Ferrari (no relation), the playful fashion aesthetic of Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci, and the post-modern designs of Alessi. Cantine Ferrari have consciously connected their wines to this Italian aesthetic, by being present wherever there’s fun and glamour to be found. This ranges from sponsoring starry US prize ceremonies like the Oscars and Emmys, to being part of the Vanity Fair lounge at the Venice Film Festival, and pouring at fashion icon Ermenegildo Zegna’s shop in Milan. There are also the Ferrari Spazio Bollicine wine bars that are strategically placed in resorts and airports, to introduce Ferrari wines to travellers who will spread the message of Ferrari far and wide.
“In terms of visibility, it’s been a pretty good investment,” says CEO Matteo Lunelli. “We want Ferrari to be a symbol of Italian living and be a symbol of Italian luxury. This is difficult to measure, but this work definitely builds the image.”
Given the number of accolades the winery has accrued in the past year alone, the strategy is clearly working.
Cantine Ferrari was awarded Wine Family of the Year at the 2016 Meininger Award.
