Cupra Marittima, in the province of Ascoli Piceno. Here, the hills descend steeply towards the Adriatic, and among tightly planted rows of vines work Marco Casolanetti and Eleonora Rossi. No consulting oenologist, no marketing department, no structured sales network—just two winegrowers who, since the late 1990s, have pursued their own vision of wine to its ultimate conclusion.
Their estate is called Oasi degli Angeli, and in the world of wine, its name is spoken with the kind of reverence usually reserved for legends.
It all begins with Kurni, the Montepulciano that rewrote the rules. Its name comes from Eleonora's family nickname, Curnì—the local word for cornel trees. Yields per vine are among the lowest in Italy: just a handful of bunches per plant, exceptionally high planting densities and late harvests, with grapes pushed to extreme levels of ripeness.
The result is a wine of almost unreal concentration that nevertheless achieves remarkable balance in its finest vintages: vanilla, spice, preserved red fruit and tobacco. A wine unlike any other Montepulciano—and, truthfully, unlike any other wine.
Behind Kurni's concentration lies a form of viticulture that borders on the heroic. Planting densities reach tens of thousands of vines per hectare—multiples of the Italian average—forcing each plant to compete with its neighbours and produce only a tiny number of intensely concentrated bunches.
When the first tastings began circulating in the 1990s, critics invoked comparisons with Bordeaux's garagiste wines—the small-production wines that had revolutionised the Right Bank.
But there is one fundamental difference: the French garagistes were often a market phenomenon, sometimes a fleeting one; Kurni is a phenomenon of place. And the land never goes out of fashion.
Two Thousand Vines, One Legend: Kupra
If Kurni is the story, Kupra is the sanctuary.
It is produced from just a few thousand vines of very old Bordò—the local name for the Grenache grape, brought to these hills centuries ago—trained as bush vines on sandy soils. Production is so limited that every bottle becomes a small event: aromas of spice and blackberry jam, silky tannins and an elegance that has won over international critics, leading many to rank it among the greatest Mediterranean reds of all.
In our catalogue, the 2022 vintage is offered at €236—and it is no coincidence that it carries our Investment designation. Extreme rarity, a cult producer and global demand are precisely the combination that the market tends to reward over time.
The Pyramid of Formats, or the Price of Rarity
There is a very tangible way to measure the cult status of a winery: look at what happens to prices as the bottle gets larger.
Two details deserve particular attention: the price per litre rises with the bottle size, a clear sign that the market is paying for the rarity of the format as well as the value of the wine itself; and the 2020 Magnum and 3-litre formats are already sold out.
When a producer's special formats disappear before its standard bottles, it is a sign that collectors are buying—the people who choose the piece destined to become impossible to find. This is perhaps the most sophisticated form of demand, and one of the strongest forward indicators of the value of a producer's name.
Why Do Collectors Compete for Them?
The case of Oasi degli Angeli brings together, in its purest form, all the principles that define collectible wine.
Absolute, structural scarcity: two hectares will never become twenty, and the estate's production philosophy makes any meaningful increase in volume unthinkable.
Inimitability: there is no such thing as a “second Kurni”, nor could there ever be. The wine is inseparable from those vines, those yields and those two people.
Instant recognisability in a blind tasting: anyone who has tasted it once would recognise it among a hundred wines
And finally, there is its remarkable trajectory.
In just 25 years, Kurni has gone from a visionary gamble to a permanent presence on the wine lists of leading restaurants and in international collections, with prices continuing to rise as successive vintages mature and enter the secondary market.
For collectors, the strategy is almost dictated by scarcity itself: a standard bottle of the latest vintage to discover and follow the estate; Kupra for absolute rarity; and large formats—while they can still be found—for a piece worth passing on.
With one honest warning: when production numbers are this small, the real challenge is not deciding whether to buy. It is getting there in time.
Explore the Oasi degli Angeli collection at Enoteca Properzio: limited availability and special formats available on request.
The contents of this article are provided for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results, and investment-grade wine is not a regulated financial asset. Prices and availability refer to the time of publication.