Arvine: Switzerland’s hidden treasure Berry colour: white
 Arvine, pearl of the Alps The ultimate Swiss grape variety, Arvine can produce captivating, complex wines of international stature, from dry to sweet. It is native to the Valais, southern Switzerland, where it was mentioned for the first time in 1602. Since the late 19th century, it has often been called Petite Arvine to distinguish it from Grosse Arvine, a completely different and rare local variety. I have not so far been able to uncover Arvine’s parents by DNA testing. It is often said that Arvine was introduced to Switzerland by the Romans. Its name allegedly derived from helvola, a grape variety mentioned by Cato the Elder. I refute this claim for two very simple reasons: firstly, it is impossible to establish botanical identity between the vague descriptions of Latin authors and modern varieties, and secondly, helvola grapes were black-berried. I think instead that its name comes from the local dialect arvena, itself probably derived from the Latin advena, meaning ‘just arrived’. This name could have been given to the variety shortly after its birth (or arrival?) in the Valais. It is a late-ripening variety, with small berries and compact, small bunches. It is quite productive, but prone to wind damage and susceptible to fungal diseases. Arvine covers 218 hectares (539 acres), almost exclusively in the Valais, representing only 1.48% of the country’s vine-bearing area. It produces complex, lively wines that can age well, with aromas of citrus and rhubarb, and a firm structure, as well as a characteristic salinity on the finish. Champions of Arvine In the Valais, several outstanding producers make excellent varietal Arvine wines. For dry wines, I would recommend Cave Benoît Dorsaz in Fully, Valentina Andrei in Saillon, Didier Joris in Chamoson, Cave de l’Orpailleur in Uvrier and Domaine des Muses in Granges, among many others. For the sweet wines, produced from grapes that are naturally left to shrivel on the vine, the undisputed champion is Marie-Thérèse Chappaz in Fully. From her biodynamic vineyards, this icon of Swiss winegrowers crafts some of the best sweet wines in the world, especially from Arvine. Her Petite Arvine Grain Noble is highly sought after, and her otherworldly Arvine Grain par Grain, made exclusively from botrytised berries harvested by hand, berry by berry, is almost impossible to find. Arvine has rarely been planted outside Switzerland. In Italy, it was introduced to the neighbouring Aosta Valley in 1970. In 1992, Angelo Gaja, one of Italy’s most famous wine producers, planted 0.36 hectares in Serralunga (Piedmonte). The result was a disaster, in his words, mainly because of problems with coulure and wind damage. In France, some vine parcels exist in the Languedoc and in the Rhône Valley, where charismatic winemaker Michel Chapoutier planted half a hectare in Tain-l’Hermitage, but he was not convinced by the results and has now abandoned the experiment. Outside Europe, it is produced only in Mendocino, California, by one adventurous producer, Ernest Vineyards, which makes a varietal wine under the Edaphos label.

Dr José Vouillamoz
 
Areni: Armenia’s national treasure Berry colour: BLACK 
History in a bottle Areni is the most important red variety in Armenia. It most likely comes from the village of Areni in Vayots Dzor, at the southeastern end of the county, where the world’s oldest cellar (4000 BC) was discovered in a cave in 2011. Interestingly, the grape remains found at the bottom of the old karas (the traditional clay jars) buried in the cave look very similar to the pips of the modern Areni variety. DNA profiling has failed to identify Areni’s parents, making it an orphan Armenian variety, but it has shown that at least two distinct varieties share the name Areni: Areni Sev (sev means black), the ‘true’ one that has historically been grown in Vayots Dzor, and Areni Seyrak (seyrak means loose, referring to the bunches), sporadically found among Areni Sev vines in old mixed vineyards. Areni Sev is a late-ripening variety with oblong, sometimes ovate, thick-skinned berries. The bunches are medium-sized and dense. It shows good resistance to frost, which means it can be cultivated at high elevations (up to 1,600 metres in Armenia). It is moderately resistant to powdery mildew and susceptible to downy mildew. Areni is exclusively cultivated in Armenia, where it has traditionally been used to make high-quality, age-worthy wines with complex aromas of violets, wisteria, cherries and blackberries, silky tannins and refreshing acidity. Champions of Areni After my first visit to Areni village in 2003, and despite the rudimentary winemaking at the only local winery (Areni Winery, now Hin Winery), I was convinced that Areni was among the most promising grape varieties in the world. In 2012, I met Zorik Gharibian in Izmir (Turkey) at the European Wine Bloggers’ Conference. I was much impressed by his 2010 Karasi Areni Noir, Zorah Wines’ very first vintage after 10 years of trial and error. We became friends and I selfishly helped him find an importer in Switzerland, in order to secure my own supply of his wines, including the mind-blowing high-end cuvée Yeraz. Since then, Zorik and his wife Yeraz have relentlessly promoted Armenian wines all over the world, and Zorah Wines has become one of Armenia’s most respected flagships. Their wines, sourced from ungrafted vineyards between 1,300 and 1,600 metres altitude are partly made in karas, traditional clay jars partly buried underground, ‘cousins’ of the Georgian qvevri. The sad thing is that Armenian-born Eduardo Eurnekian, one of the wealthiest people in Argentina and owner of several airports, including that of Yerevan in Armenia, has founded a winery named Karas Wines, despite not using any karas in the winemaking process. In 2018, judges granted him the exclusive usage of the name Karas, disregarding 6,000 years of shared tradition. Zorik Gharibian has been determinedly fighting against this unfair judgement and he plans to appeal to the country’s Supreme Court. I strongly support him. And I predict that Armenia may well be the ‘next big thing’ in the wine world. Dr José Vouillamoz
 Kydonitsa: Rebirth of an extremely rare grape variety Berry colour: WHITE Rescued in the nick of time Kydonitsa is a survivor, an almost forgotten variety from Lakonía (Laconia) in the southern Pelopónnisos (Peloponnese) in Greece. According to local belief, it was widely cultivated in the medieval period when Lakonía formed part of the Byzantine Empire. It then flourished under brief periods of Venetian rule, before it was threatened with extinction under Ottoman rule, as a result of the bans on alcohol consumption. It had almost disappeared when it was saved from extinction by Yiannis Vatistas and Yorgos Tsimbidi (Monemvasia Winery) in the late 1990s. DNA profiling has not revealed any match or parentage with any other variety, making it a Greek orphan. The medium-sized bunches are relatively loose and elongated. The berries are small and turn golden yellow when ripe. In Greek, the word kυδωνίτσα (kydonitsa) means ‘little quince’, referring to the aroma of both the berry and the wine. The wine also shows notes of lemon, grapefruit, bergamot and mirabelle plum, as well as aromatic herbs. It is elegant, creamy, with crisp acidity and a slightly bitter, orange-peel finish, with a hint of iodine. Kydonitsa is grown exclusively in Lakonía, on the east coast of the Pelopónnisos, near the island of Monemvasia. Champions of Kydonitsa Yorgos Tsimbidi is a visionary. In 1997, while most wineries in the Pelopónnisos were busy planting so-called international grape varieties, he founded Monemvasia Winery in order to revive the historical Malvasia wine in its birthplace. The name Malvasia has been given to a wide range of genetically distinct white-, pink-, grey- and black-skinned varieties which are all particularly well suited to the production of sweet wines. The name is purported to be a corruption of Monemvasia, which means ‘single entrance’ and is the name of a small port situated on a rocky spur in Lakonía. It has been famous since ancient times for its sweet wine made from sun-dried grapes. The earliest mention of the sweet wines of Monemvasia dates back to 1214 in Éfesos (Ephesus, today in Turkey), and in 1278 the Venetians were already importing vinum de Malvasias. The exact identities of the grape varieties making up this sweet wine are still unknown, but Kydonitsa and the appropriately named Monemvasia were probably part of the blend. This is what drove Yorgos Tsimbidi to put all his time and energy into rescuing them, carrying out countless on-farm trials since 1997. He now produces dry varietal wines, as well as the sweet ‘Monemvasia – Malvasia’, a blend of Monemvasia, Kydonitsa, Assyrtiko and Asproudi grapes, dried for approximately two weeks under the sun, in order to revive the ancient tradition. Today, Yorgos runs the winery with his wife Elli and their daughters Marialena, Anastasia and Artemis. I was able to taste a mini-vertical of Kydonitsa during my visit in 2016, which convinced me of the exceptional quality and ageing potential of this resurrected variety. And the rest of the portfolio convinced me that Monemvasia Winery is one of the best in mainland Greece. Dr José Vouillamoz

 Baga: Northern Portuguese red with a simple name and a complex character Berry colour: black 
The rehabilitation of Baga The meaning of Baga may be simple (berry) but the variety is far from it. When it is good, it is breathtakingly beautiful and capable of long ageing. When it is abused, it is acid, mean and lean, with tough tannins. It requires commitment from growers and wine lovers. While it may have originated in Portugal's Dão region, it has found its home in neighbouring Bairrada, where it is the dominant red variety. In 2017 there were 8,258 hectares (20,406 acres), 4% of Portugal’s vineyard area. It’s found mainly in Bairrada but also in Dão, although there it is not authorised in DOP wines. Baga vines are also planted, though far less numerously, in Lisboa, the Tejo and the Douro. The cool, wet, Atlantic-influenced climate of Bairrada is particularly inconvenient for a late-ripening variety with thin skins and prone to botrytis. If its vigour and productivity are not controlled by careful viticulture or the natural balance achieved by older vines in poor soils, there is increased risk of under-ripeness or rot when the September rains arrive. Despite all this, those whose hearts have been captured by the variety have shown it to be as bewitching as Pinot Noir, and as hauntingly complex and long-lived as Nebbiolo. Champions of Baga The variety allows itself to be made in many styles, influenced strongly by the soil (limestone-clay and granite are both prized), the age of the vines and, not least, by the personalities of the winegrowers and their choices in the winery. The most restlessly experimental and determined is Luís Pato, who was prominent among a small group of quality-minded winegrowers who dragged Baga into the spotlight for fine wine after it had languished for so long as a source of bulk reds churned out by the state-controlled co-ops and négociants for much of the 20th century. While there are today, thankfully, too many good winegrowers to mention by name, the Baga Friends display the variety’s wonderful diversity: from the powerful styles aged in oak that become increasingly complex and perfumed with age that are produced by, for example, Luís Pato, Mário Sérgio Alves Nuno at Quinta das Bageiras, François Chasans at Quinta da Vacariça and Paulo Sousa at Sidónio de Sousa; to the lightly stepping, red-fruited, fresh and scented beauties of Filipa Pato and Douro incomer Dirk Niepoort at Quinta de Baixo. Baga can also make very good sparkling wines. Bussaco Palace Hotel has an astonishing collection of very old vintages, blending Baga from Bairrada with Touriga Nacional from Dão. Julia Harding MW 
Kisi: Recently resurrected and scented Georgian white Berry colour: WHITE The resurrection of Kisi Maybe it’s because thin-skinned Kisi is difficult to grow and sensitive to the climate that it was on the verge of extinction at the end of the 20th century, when David Maisuradze made a wine that put the variety firmly back in the spotlight. The highly respected winemaker, then with Telavi Wine Cellar, managed to find just four tonnes of the variety to make a wine, fermented in a stainless-steel tank, that stunned wine lovers with its pure, floral aromas and deep fruit flavours of citrus and pear, richly fruited but dry. This variety didn’t stand much chance in the Soviet era when only a very limited number of varieties were permitted in the interests of volume rather than quality. Kisi was not among them and it survived in family vineyards in just three villages in its homeland of Kakheti, in the Alazani Valley in eastern Georgia in the shadow of the Caucasus Mountains: mainly in Maghraani but also in Argokhi and Pichkhovani. There are currently about 500 hectares (1,235 acres) of Kisi in Georgia, all still in this region. There is currently no DNA evidence to reveal the variety’s parentage but it is not related to Mtsvane Kakhuri or Rkatsiteli, the latter a Soviet favourite. Champions of Kisi In Georgia, ‘classic’ white wines are made in a way familiar to most 21st-century wine drinkers – fermented without the skins, typically in temperature-controlled tanks, occasionally fermented or aged in oak. By contrast, so-called qvevri white wines, sometimes referred to as amber wines because of their typically deep colour, are those vinified in traditional Georgian qvevri, large clay vessels ranging from 700 to 2,000 litres, buried underground so that just the opening is visible. The lightly crushed whole berries, including the skins and seeds, and sometimes even the stems, are fermented together in a qvevri, thus producing a wine with firm, even chewy, tannic texture and a wonderful panoply of flavours derived both from the variety and the winemaking, often ranging from apricots to chamomile. Soon after the appearance of Maisuradze’s revelatory wine, Gogi Dakishvili, a master of these qvevri wines, was able to buy a small amount of Kisi and make a wine in this second style. The cat was out of the bag and growers, including Dakishvili, started to replant when they saw the potential.  Kisi made under both the Dakishvili Family and the Orgo labels reveal all the textural and aromatic complexity of scented varieties made in this way. They are utterly pure, full-bodied wines with intense aromas and flavours that have sufficient structure to be very versatile with food. Qvevri winemaking was recognised as a UNESCO intangible heritage in 2013. While this is the style I particularly enjoy, for anyone who is not a fan of amber wines, there are fine examples that reveal even more of Kisi’s aromatic potential and deep but fresh fruit intensity. These include those from Winiveria and Khareba, and a particularly good off-dry style from Koncho & Co. One of the finest, in this case with light oak influence, is made by Danieli Winery, from vines near Argokhi, one of the three villages which were key to Kisi’s renaissance. Julia Harding MW
 This article was originally published in FONDATA, Issue One.  Illustration by Sarah Jane Humphrey.

Wine Grapes co-authors, Julia Harding MW and Dr José Vouillamoz, champion five lesser-known grape varieties from the book – and the winemakers that are using them to notable effect.

Wine Grapes co-authors Julia Harding MW and Dr José Vouillamoz champion five lesser-known grape varieties – and the winemakers using them to notable effect

FONDATA: Raisins d'être

Raisins d'être

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

Josef Chromy

Accounts

Your access is restricted because of your age.

Access forbidden

You must be over the legal age to view this page. Please verify your age to enter.

Are you over the legal age to purchase alcohol?

As a result of the quantity requested for delivery, we recommend using Third Party Shipping. If you proceed with our Shipping, there may be a delay to the selected ship date.

As a result of the quantity requested for delivery, we recommend using Third Party Shipping. If you proceed with our Shipping, you will not be able to define a ship date, and we will get in touch with you to arrange delivery.

Your order request will be cancelled. Are you sure you want to proceed?

Due to the quantity requested for collection, there may be a delay in meeting your requested collection date.

Due to the quantity requested for collection, it is not possible to define a collection date at this stage. Our team will liaise with the warehouse and contact you directly to confirm a suitable pick-up date.

This item has been listed by a collector and is available for storage or immediate delivery

For orders with a high value, we recommend shipping with a third party carrier. Items shipped with third parties will remain in banded OWCs.

Due to the quantity requested, you won’t be able to select a collection date. Please submit your request, and we will liaise with our warehouse and confirm the collection date with you directly.

Due to the quantity requested, you won’t be able to continue the purchase. Please select third party, or change the quantity (maximum 48 is allowed).

Due to the quantity requested, you won’t be able to select a shipping date at checkout. Please submit your request, and we will liaise with our warehouse and confirm the delivery date with you directly.

For up to 499 bottles in storage, the rate is 39¢/bottle per month or a $50 minimum monthly charge (this covers up to 142 bottles). For over 500 bottles, the storage rate is 35¢/bottle per month.

Storage is charged at HKD 40 per 12-bottle case per month. A minimum monthly storage fee of HKD 80 applies, covering up to 24 bottles.

Standard storage rate

By selecting third-party shipping, you will take full responsibility for all aspects of legal compliance and authorize Vinfolio to transfer the items to the party specified in your instructions. Items shipped via third parties will remain in their original packaging.

Collection times are between 8:30am - 12pm & 1:30pm - 4:30pm, Monday to Friday. Wines at Will Call, that are not picked up within 10 business days, will be transferred to storage and subject to a $1.50 per bottle stocking fee.

Items to be sourced and shipped to our state-of-the-art fine wine storage facility for the best possible safe-keeping where you can arrange collection from our warehouse address in Napa.

Will Call (Napa)

You entered the incorrect password too many times. Your account has been temporarily locked. Please wait five minutes before trying again.

It seems you are visiting from {country}, we invite you to experience our {nationality} website.

Are you browsing from {country}?

We’re unable to process your order with both event tickets and a wine or spirit product in the same transaction. To proceed, please remove either the event tickets or the item from your basket. You’ll then be able to complete your purchase.

Please review your basket

Forgot Password

We're in the final stages of upgrading to our brand-new trading platform. As part of this transition, we're currently migrating all customer-owned inventory to ensure a smooth and seamless experience.

Our new and improved platform will be ready for you on Friday, April 4.

Thank you for your patience - we can't wait to show you what's next.

Oops, something went wrong

We couldn't find any results to show here.

Please note: delivery, duty and VAT charges may apply

Our website is currently down for maintenance.

Maintenance Mode

Pre-authorizing a Payment Method enables your Account Manager to make payments on your behalf, without payment verification.

Pre-authorize

This transaction has been blocked by authentication failure.

Authentication failure

Your payment card has expired. Please check your details and try again.

Expired card

Insufficient funds to pay your balance. Please check your details and try again.

Insufficient funds

This transaction has been blocked by the payment provider due to possible fraudulent behaviour.

Transaction blocked

Please choose a different payment method and try again.

Unknown error

About description for demonstration purposes

shows all the items you currently store with us. These items can be sold, delivered or transferred.

At {shortName}

Your allocation will be cancelled. Are you sure you want to continue?

Your pre-order item will be deleted. Are you sure you want to continue?

Your delivery request will be cancelled. Are you sure you want to proceed?

represents all the wines that are in your possession and have been consumed.

This is the price you paid for this item.

Cost price

After adding your new address, you'll be redirected back to this page.

Create a new address

Your notification will be deleted. Are you sure you want to continue?

The lowest price you're willing to sell at. If the net price goes below this value your listing will be removed.

shows all the items that you have pre-ordered, including en primeur wines, and all the items on your watchlist.

Futures

You can set a floor price on items you're selling based on a % of current unit net value.

You can set a market price on items you're selling based on a % of current unit net value.

shows all the actions that you have taken on items in your Portfolio.

groups every action by type - Purchase, Sale, Delivery, and Inbound Transfer - so it's clear at a glance what happened to each item.

History

shows all the items that are currently in transit to or from {shortName}.

In transit

Local delivery is free for orders over HK$1,800 (to a single location). For orders below this value, delivery is HK$150 for up to four cases and HK$50 per case thereafter.

Shipping starts from €15 within Italy and €45 to Switzerland and the rest of Europe for up to 48 bottles (75cl). Costs vary by destination. Larger shipments can be quoted on request.

The date shown below is when your order will ship from our local warehouse. Your final delivery date, along with full tracking details, will be provided once our team has processed your request.

You can arrange collection from our Retail store on 22nd Floor, 8 Wyndham Street, Central Hong Kong.
Collection times are between 9:30am-13:00 and 14:00-18:00pm, Monday to Friday. We are closed on public holidays.

You can arranged collection from our warehouse STI INTERNAZIONALE SPA, on Viale del Lavoro, 57, 37051 Bovolone, Verona.
Pick-up hours are between 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM and 1:30 PM to 5:30 PM, Monday to Friday. We are closed on public holidays.

This is the current estimated market value for this item.

Manually set prices will be overwritten. Already listed wines are not affected.

Updates all unlisted wines to current market price.

Set all at market

represents all the wines you currently have in your Portfolio that aren't stored with us. Press the

My cellar

Name

Net price

New portfolio available

New portfolio

You do not have any invoices at this time.

shows all the items from your Portfolio that are currently on the market.

On sale

shows all the items you currently have in your Portfolio. You can perform individual actions on them from this page.

Overview

shows any items that are currently awaiting user action.

Pending

This is the dynamic market price of the item with trading margin removed.

This is the amount of profit you will receive if your listing sells.

Pre-authorised payments enable automatic transactions on your behalf, ensuring seamless and hassle-free payments. This allows recurring charges, subscriptions, or scheduled payments to be processed without manual approval each time.

The number of cases you wish to place on sale

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.

*Market price is dynamic and may change. At time of sale a 10% trading fee will be deducted from the final sale price.

Total market price*

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.

Profile

This item is at FINE+RARE, available for storage, transfer or delivery.
 Most UK deliveries can be made within 3-5 working days, with next day delivery for London;
 an exact date will be available when arranging delivery.
 International deliveries have longer lead-times, please contact us for details.

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. Your wine will then be stored by FINE+RARE in a bonded 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).

We will source this item at the guaranteed price from our network of suppliers and arrange shipment to FINE+RARE.
 The lead-time depends on many variables, but 6-12 weeks is an average estimate.
 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).

Josef Chromy

Filter

Please wait

Related articles