How ASAP Rocky, Pusha-T and Offset's favorite wine is born

Is it possible to make wine a design object? According to Giovanni Leonardo and Francesco Vittorio Bassan, yes. They are the two founders of Katkoot, the independent wine brand born in 2018 and in a few years become a constant presence in the world of fashion and design. "It all started four years ago," Giovanni Leonardo, an artist already working with Rick Owens Furniture as well as a ceramicist and painter, tells us. «We decided to do a project that would unite both of our worlds, that of the artist now far from Italy and that of the sommelier, very tied to the territory and research.» A perfect encounter then led to the birth of a bottle similar to an art object, capable of redefining the very idea of wine. «When I started conceiving the bottle I did it thinking of a sculpture, with the desire to create something different and keeping in mind important ideas such as the environment and reuse.»

Hence the intuition to give the bottle a second use, employing Giovanni Leonardo's artistic background to develop sculptures - handmade in an atelier in Morocco - attached to the base. «The idea is that once you finish the bottle you can detach the base, attach through pressure, and then use it as an ashtray or pocket emptier,» Giovanni explains to me. It is an idea that besides proving successful- «I was once at Lenny Kravitz's house and found out that he uses our bases as ashtrays»  -has managed to give a new dimension to the concept of luxury wine, a market that by 2027 is expected to reach a total value of $124 billion. Partly thanks to the fascination born of these bases - handmade from the idea of primitive jewelry and each one different from the other, in its first two years of life Katkoot made waves in the art world, touring between the Barbican in London and Venice Biennale. From there, in a natural way, Katkoot came into the world of fashion - CdG, Givenchy, Moncler, Rick Owens - and music - from Pusha-T to ASAP Rocky and Offset.

Distributed in Japan, Korea, France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and available in some of the world's most prestigious storefronts, such as Galeries Lafayette Champs-Elysees in Paris and Selfridges in London, Katkoot - whose name derives from a word of Arabic etymology meaning "small and precious" - wants to do the impossible: redefine the image of luxury wine. "It's still very stereotypical and backward, with the white man in the blue shirt at sunset in the vineyard," explains Giovanni Leonardo. «We said to ourselves 'Okay, why if so many other industries have managed to modernize luxury wine is so far behind?'» This led to Katkoot's first shoot, a break from the classic imagery that has always accompanied the industry. But beyond design, there is, of course, wine quality, research, and passion for the raw material.

«We started with a Prosecco from Asolo because it is the area that reflects us and represents our history,» Francesco Vittorio explains. «Our great-grandfather was a wine bottler, our father's family is in distribution instead, but no one had ever gone into actual production. We wanted to go back, however, combining these two worlds.» In addition to Prosecco di Asolo, in 2020 Amarone Della Valpolicella DOCG 2015 - "one of the best vintages" Francesco Vittorio reveals to us  - began with a limited edition of 1,000 collector's bottles, followed the next year by Rose Riserva 2016. Quality and vision are the two pillars on which Katkoot was born and grew, a project that thus aims to combine the excellence of the best wine with a young artistic vision to create a product capable of responding to the needs of a precise niche of the public, new and different from the one that has always characterized the world of luxury wines.