But the true legends of Tuscany are written not by decrees, but by families. In Montalcino, at the Il Greppo estate, the Biondi-Santi family a century and a half ago created the "long" version of Sangiovese—Brunello di Montalcino. In 1865, Clemente Santi experimented with berry selection and aging; by 1888, the wine, interpreted by his grandson Ferruccio, received its current name and philosophy: aging, strict selection, a transparent-dry dramaturgy of tannins. Brunello was born as a private idea but became a symbol of how patience transforms into capital.

An hour’s drive away—another story: Antinori nel Chianti Classico, an "invisible" winery carved into a hill, hidden beneath vineyards. It was designed so that the architecture would not compete with the landscape: the stepped roof is earth and vines, the facade—two horizontal cuts with panoramic glass, and inside—long corridors, coolness, and silence where the air trembles. The Antinori "merchants" began their history in 1385, but only in 2012 did they make their definitive statement on how wine and space can become one. Today, the winery is studied in textbooks on "wine architecture": not a museum, but a production temple—a cultural gesture where the bottle and the building share a common meaning.

Yet auctions live by their own laws of myth. That moment, which will forever remain in textbooks: two bottles of 1945 Romanée-Conti—$ 558,000 and $ 496,000 at Sotheby’s in New York, a world record for a single bottle lot. In market terms, this is a "non-replicable asset": the uniqueness of the vintage, the post-war context, the small release—and, of course, the cult of DRC, standing apart from everything else. Since then, the record remains unbroken: once a year, high-profile collections appear, like that of Bill Koch (summer 2025, Christie’s, 8,000 bottles, expected $ 15+ million), but the very "focal point" for enthusiasts remains the same—rare Burgundies, the "second wave" of great Bordeaux, old Champagnes. The geography of demand has also shifted: in 2025, American clients are the most active at Sotheby’s auctions for the first time in a decade.

All of this is far away, behind the scenes. We return to Moscow, where wine is gradually changing its role. On one hand, the country’s production confidence is growing: southern regions are increasing output, plans for sparkling wines are being discussed; the industry is seeking a language for "its own" wines and its own classics. On the other hand, imports reflect a logistics "disruption": shipments from the EU at the beginning of 2025 are lower than last year’s, but for France—a paradoxical "bounce off the bottom." The Russian shelf is changing: some items disappear, and in their place—new suppliers, new routes, new specialists.

And along with this, the "home" infrastructure for wine is also changing. If at the beginning of the 2010s a wine cabinet was considered a whim, today it is a minimum, like an ice maker in the kitchen. In expensive houses and apartments, wine rooms have become a mandatory item in the brief: a separate air conditioning circuit, humidity of 50−70%, stable 12−14 °C, vibration absorption, and no ultraviolet light. In advertisements for luxury real estate, the "cellar" is mentioned alongside the spa area and fireplace: not an option, but a mark of class. And this is not a whim—it's simply that wine does not tolerate fluctuations; it remembers every "hot" week and takes revenge with a flat taste.

The rules are simple and as old as the world: darkness, silence, horizontal storage, humidity, adequate ventilation—and you’ll be surprised how nobly a bottle "ages" without unnecessary temperature fluctuations. For sparkling wines, 7−9 °C is better; whites are more comfortable at 10−12 °C; rosés at 12−14 °C; and for reds—a stable 12−14 °C, if we’re talking about long-term storage. The higher the temperature, the faster the bouquet "fades": wine that has spent years on a top shelf at +20 °C loses its depth, like a faded photograph. In urban realities, compromise solutions—wine cabinets with multi-zones—have long become the norm.

But Moscow’s wine also has an "external" life—social, public. Private tastings, invitation-only clubs, formats where "join me for a glass" means a conversation about co-owning a business, a charitable project, or a new art collection. This city knows how to turn a tasting into an access ritual: a glass of Champagne—like a handshake; a rare Burgundy—like a password. And yes, the number of similar venues is growing—from urban wineries and intimate wine bars to private clubs with educational programs and their own import projects. In the language of dressing rooms: wine is not just about taste, but also about role.

Let’s return to Tuscany. There, under the stone vaults, you will quickly understand a simple thing: wine has two times. The first is linear, calendar-based: when it was bottled, when to taste it, when it peaks. The second is human: when you were ready to understand it. In the Antinori cellars, time is measured in steel tanks and oak staves; at Il Greppo—in ancient barrels and notebooks of records. In both cases, the "secret life" of wine is the life it lives without us: slowly, stubbornly, reservedly.

In Moscow, this time is learning to live within interiors. In studies where the soft light of lighters barely grazes the glass, in hidden cabinets where a Chianti Riserva dozes in one slot, a Tuscan "super" with Cabernet in another, and a sturdy Bordeaux from the warm 2015 in a third. Serious collectors maintain strict records, databases, QR codes, and insurance. Romantics have wish lists from auction catalogs. And everyone shares one unchanging storage ethic: if you’ve taken it on—let the bottle live its life, don’t fuss.

What about the "numbers"? The market is thinner and more mature than during the Covid years. Demand for outstanding wines remains stable—myths rarely depreciate. But over the long term, three things are more important than ever: provenance, storage conditions, and the owner’s taste—not someone else’s rating. In Moscow, they have learned to verify lot provenance, reserve spots at auctions, and send questionable labels for examination. The best collections are born during off-season corrections: those assembled not to "appreciate" but to "endure." The auction record for Romanée-Conti 1945 reminds us: greatness is rarely repeated, but respect for uniqueness never goes out of style.

How to live with wine at home—a short cheat sheet for those who love it without fuss. Set up a "proper" corner. Maintain a stable temperature—12−14 °C. Protect it from light. Keep humidity at 50−70%. Store horizontally. Don’t shake it, roll it, or show it off to friends with a "look what I have" every weekend. Every "demonstration" is a minus for the cork’s condition. If you don’t have a room—a multi-zone cabinet is perfectly civilized. If you do—a separate climate control loop and sensors. It’s boring, but it works.

And where to drink is a question of proximity. There are public places with excellent wine lists. There are new urban wineries and private clubs where tasting is an intimate conversation. There are home evenings when a glass acts as a slow timer for conversations. Each scene has its own sound.

We are accustomed to thinking that wine is "about pleasure." And so it is. But it is also about discipline. In Tuscan cellars, this manifests in the thickness of walls and the thickness of notebooks. In Moscow apartments—in the thickness of the wine cabinet door and the thickness of your nerves when you want to open a bottle "right now." The secret life of wine is a life without witnesses: the bottle ages while you are busy with your own. And then you meet suddenly, right on time, and understand that all these years were not in vain—that time in glass has a taste.

In Tuscany, they understood this long ago: there, architecture took a step back so that wine could speak louder. In Moscow, we are only learning—building our "cellars" in cabinets and panoramic living rooms. But we share a common language: respect for the silence in which a bottle matures. And someday, in ten or twenty years, someone’s apartment in Khamovniki will become what the Antinori cellar is today: a space where time has been taught not to rush.

Where to buy is a matter of taste and trust. In Moscow, there are enough players for whom "provenance" is not just a word from a catalog, but a reputation. The criterion is simple: are they willing to tell you the story of the bottle as if it were a documentary? Are they willing to show photos of the storage conditions? Are they willing to talk you out of it when you're reaching for a "legend" that you won't actually enjoy?

And perhaps this is the only honest way to talk about heritage. It is not in museums or in pompous lists of assets. It is in how we preserve things that will outlive us and still remain warm. How we give them space, air, and time. How we open them not because they have "appreciated in value," but because an evening has come when we can remember why cities were invented in the first place.

This segment has another dimension—tedious but honest: climate and consumption. The world drinks less wine than it did ten years ago; Generation Z is changing habits, while transport costs and climate risks are altering standards. The value of vineyards has generally declined, though the six letters of "Champagne" still know how to buck the trend. These news items may seem irrelevant to a Moscow kitchen, yet they dictate what will be on the shelf in five years and at what price.

And yet, the main thing is not the reports. The main thing is that brief moment when you open a bottle you’ve been saving. To pour—and hear it meet the air. To listen to the aroma—first respectable oak, then fresh cherry, then the familiar graphite of Tuscany and wet ceramics. Wine is not just geography and years of aging, but a language of memory. We drink it to remember each other.

Moscow is a city that knows how to keep secrets. In its apartments—behind anodized aluminum doors, behind ribbed glass, under the indifferent hum of compressors—live bottles whose biographies are longer than our own. They outlast changes of government and currencies, thaws and crises, prenuptial agreements and divorces. They arrive in the capital via Duty Free, via parallel imports, via auction catalogs, often with a biography spanning hundreds of years. And strangely enough, to understand Moscow’s wine life today, one must descend deep underground—to where Tuscany has for centuries hidden its pride from heat, light, and time.

Author: Victor Evdokimov

Excessive alcohol consumption is harmful to your health

Tuscany, of course, does not begin at Pisa Airport or even with the first glass of Chianti. It begins in 1716, when Cosimo III de' Medici issued the "Bando" — an edict that for the first time legally defined the wine boundaries of Chianti and several other terroirs. It was an early manifesto of quality control and the fight against counterfeiting; one of the world’s first attempts to protect a geographical name — long before the word "appellation" became fashionable on Moscow restaurant menus. Historians of the Chianti Classico Consortium still refer to this document as the "first" experience of legally protecting a winemaking zone; it was born on September 24, 1716, and to this day defines the logic of place and taste.

In these cellars, it’s easy to lose track of time. But open a news feed — and wine ceases to be "eternity" and becomes a market. The years 2023−2025 have been marked by a "correction" for fine wine. The Liv-ex indices, the global barometer of the secondary market, continue to decline: the Fine Wine 100 has been trending downward since September 2022, with another ~3% drop quarter-on-quarter in Q2 2025; a general slowdown — yes, but the market has yet to find a "bottom." Even the "fifty" First Growths from Bordeaux aren’t helping — the decline has been almost continuous for 33 months. For a conservative asset with a long history, this sounds like boring accounting, but in reality, it’s a rare window of opportunity: things that were out of reach just yesterday are becoming more accessible today.

Experts confirm: their Luxury Investment Index has been negative for the second year in a row (-3.3% for 2024), collectible assets have "reimagined their price tags," and wine here is part of the larger picture of a "luxury correction." For Moscow, this means a simple thing: the most disciplined collectors are buying not "yesterday's hits," but long-standing, undisputed names—at a discount to the hype of 2021−2022. This is not about "quick profit," but about the quality of time inside the bottle.