Bottling Generosity: Marinella Senatore Designs Ornellaia’s 2021 Vintage
At Tuscan estate Ornellaia, art and wine come together to illuminating effect in bottles commissioned from artist Marinella Senatore
O rnellaia, the great wine estate in Tuscany, has been making rich yet elegant red wines since the early 1980s. This was one of a handful of wineries that boldly flouted longstanding regional winemaking regulations by adopting Bordeaux grape varieties (particularly cabernet sauvignon and merlot) and techniques, producing wines that soon became sought after as “Super Tuscans”.
These days, the rules are much kinder to makers of premium wine. Nevertheless, Ornellaia’s current owners, the Frescobaldi family, have chosen to continue the tradition of experimentation – now in the realm of art. In 2006, the estate began the collaboration Vendemmia d’Artista, choosing one acclaimed artist each year to create an artwork that expresses the unique character of that vintage. The artist has complete freedom to interpret the wine via the materials that most inspire them, from the luminous purity of Carrara marble (Yutaka Sone in 2013), to knitted yarns (Ernesto Neto in 2017).
In addition to the work of art, which remains in the Ornellaia collection, the artist creates a limited edition of numbered and signed labels for just 111 large-format bottles (100 double magnums, 10 imperials and one salmanazar). Every case of Ornellaia also includes one bottle with a label created by the artist. There is fierce competition among collectors for these rare bottles but, in keeping with Ornellaia’s desire to revive and update the Renaissance tradition of artistic patronage, most are auctioned by Sotheby’s to benefit the Guggenheim Museum’s Mind’s Eye programme, which offers blind and partially sighted people a multisensory experience of art.
“Just as the wine blends four grape varieties, these artworks meld stories, shapes and places into an evocative whole”
This year’s artist, Marinella Senatore, is fortunate: the 2021 vintage is considered Bolgheri’s best of the past decade, along with 2016. The wine is luscious yet elegant; still young but already alluring. Ornellaia has named it La Generosità and, to reflect that generosity, Senatore – an Italian artist known for her intricate public light sculptures – has dreamed up a series of bright and playful collages made from photographs and prints, as well as a neon sculpture of swirling lines featuring the famous Walt Whitman quote: “I contain multitudes”.
Just as the wine blends four grape varieties, these artworks meld stories, shapes and places into an evocative whole: a harmonious combination of sheet music and foliage, colourful shapes and human silhouettes combine to offer the viewer a celebration of movement and creativity that spills out of its two dimensions; generosity incarnate.
Her interpretation, Senatore says, focuses on “themes of festivity and the communal celebration of the harvest; the symbiotic relationship between humans and the land”. She perceives art and wine as closely entwined, and the sense of community on the estate resonates with her artistic practice.
Her descriptions are nearly as evocative as her collages. She enthusiastically talks of this vintage of Ornellaia as “representing an energy that flows reciprocally between the people and the land in a dance of vibrant colours and harmonious movements”. By transforming that idea into art, she has taken a superlative vintage of this world-renowned wine beyond the bottle and brought it to glowing life.
Cover image: Italian artist Marinella Senatore with the bottles she designed. Courtesy of Ornellaia
