Message in a Bottle

Can you keep a designer item in a cellar? Salvatore Ferragamo,38,the namesake grandson of the late iconic Italian shoemaker certainly thinks you can. One of the grandchildren of Salvatore Ferragamo (his father Ferruccio Ferragamo is the CEO of Salvatore Ferragamo Italia),Salvatore junior isn’t just satisfied with pushing the famous cork wedges or the needle thin shoes of the company that made its mark in Hollywood by designing customised shoes for celebrities such as Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe.

While his more celebrated identical twin brother James Ferragamo is the leather product director (women’s section) for the Group,the mild-mannered Salvatore junior launched Il Borro wines in 1993 on a Tuscan estate spread over 2,000 acres,with lush vineyards of over 100 acres. In Delhi to promote the newest five labels over a wine tasting session in Hyatt Regency’s quaint Italian restaurant La Piazza,Salvatore junior tells how the Ferragamo name helps in “generating interest”. “It helps open a lot of doors and generates a buzz around the business. But the counter product is when people are not interested in the wine and its quality,” said Salvatore junior,who was schooled in UK and later went to the NYU Stern School of Business. He got into this unglamorous business out of a passion for “winemaking” because “I didn’t feel any inclination to join the fashion world,” he says,visiting India this time with his wife Cristina.

He has certainly kept his distance from the heady world of fashion: The Salvatore Ferragamo logo is not in evidence on the bottle. Each new vintage carries an image of the shell — symbolising the rich soil. “We didn’t want people to have any pre-conceived notions that if it is a Ferragamo,it will be expensive,” says Dharti Desai,Founder and CEO of FineWinesnMore,that is currently distributing the wine in six states in India that includes UP,Rajasthan and Delhi.

The company started retailing with 2,500 bottles in November 2008,a week after the 26/11 tragedy. Currently,the bottles are priced at Rs 3,000 in Delhi.