Why did kings drink wine? And how did they tell the best?
For 3,000 years, wine has shown people who you are. Pharaohs had vintage and winemaker written on their jars, a Roman gave his name to the first cult vintage, and an emperor had the wines of Bordeaux ranked. What has survived of that to this day, and which three bottles in our range carry that history.
The first label is 3,300 years old
When Tutankhamun's tomb was opened in 1922, it contained dozens of wine jars. Each one carried, written in ink: the harvest year, the name of the estate, the name of the cellar master, and the quality. That is, at its core, the label that still sits on every bottle today. A pharaoh didn't take just any wine into the afterlife. He took the provably best.
Wine was, then as now, scarce, delicate and expensive to transport. Whoever had it had land, labour, cellars and time. Whoever had the best had all of that in abundance. That's why wine became a marker of rank long before anyone talked about flavour.
Rome: the first cult vintage
The Romans turned it into a system. The empire's most famous wine came from Mount Falernus in Campania, and the most famous vintage was that of 121 BC, named after the consul Opimius. Pliny the Elder wrote, more than a hundred years later, that it was still being drunk. A host who poured Opimian wine was saying: I can afford something nobody else can buy any more. The idea of the collector's wine was born.
France: coronations and an emperor with a taste for order
The kings of France were crowned in Reims, in the heart of Champagne. The wine of the region became the wine of the coronation feasts, and when it began to sparkle in the 17th century, the wine of the court of Versailles. To this day, Champagne is the wine you open to celebrate something, because it has been celebrating coronations for 300 years.
In 1855, Emperor Napoleon III wanted to showcase the country's best wines at the Paris World's Fair. Bordeaux merchants ranked the estates of the Médoc into five classes according to the prices they had commanded for decades. That list still stands, almost unchanged, today. A Premier Cru from 1855 is a Premier Cru in 2026. No other product in the world has a ranking that has lasted 170 years.
Piedmont: the wine of kings
In the 19th century, the House of Savoy, later the kings of Italy, had vineyards planted in the hills around Barolo. The wine made there from the Nebbiolo grape earned the name it still carries today: il vino dei re, il re dei vini. The wine of kings, the king of wines. Barolo is austere, needs years, and rewards patience. That is exactly what made it the wine of those who had time.
How did people tell the best?
By the same things as today. Provenance: a site you could name. Vintage: a year known to have been good. Age: a wine that had survived years proved its quality by doing so, since poor wine turned to vinegar in that time. Scarcity: what existed only in small quantities. The pharaoh, the consul, the emperor and the king all asked about exactly the four things that appear on a good label today.
Three bottles in our range with this history
Barolo El Pì Bon, Monforte d'Alba, CHF 79.00. The king of wines, from one of the finest communes of the region. At least 38 months of ageing before sale. Open it an hour in advance, or leave it for five years.
Grand Augustin, Saint-Émilion Grand Cru, CHF 65.00. Bordeaux with a classification. Saint-Émilion has its own ranking, and Grand Cru is the level from which a château may keep its name.
La Croix Blanche, Champagne, CHF 89.90. The wine of coronations, extra brut, as dry as the courts of the past never knew it and connoisseurs today prefer it.
And for those who want to follow the Roman path: Angelo DiVino Amarone Riserva, CHF 99.90, made from dried grapes, just as the Romans once did in the Veneto.
