"Russian tycoon Andrey Yakunin sets out to produce wine in Umbria: Cottarella's expert on vines'. This headline appeared on the Umbria24.it news site on 7 April [1]. Yes, part of the headline was also the error in attributing two t's to the surname of Italy's most famous wine consultant: Cotarella Riccardo.
The news, in brief, concerns a 150 million euro investment that Andrey Yakunin has decided to make in Umbria, in the castle of Antognolla. Umbria24 also informs us that we are 'in an area that, in addition to having a long winemaking tradition, is located and adjacent to important inlets, such as that of Montefalco, for example'. And so it was that Yakunin also decided to plant a vineyard of just under 2 hectares, with merlot, and to do so he turned to Riccardo Cotarella. Yakunin, 47, a Russian tycoon and son of the oligarch Vladimir, a former KGB officer once considered very close to Putin, is an international entrepreneur in the field of luxury hotels. He recently spoke out sharply against the Russian invasion of Ukraine in a fine interview published on 9 March in the daily Il Tempo [2] which I recommend you read.
This news, however, reawakened in me a curiosity about an article published some time ago in Corriere.it by Luciano Ferraro, which dealt precisely with Riccardo Cotarella's Russian consultancy and which I went to see again, together with a tweet by journalist Felicity Carter (which has since been deleted, but of which we have the screenshot). That curiosity had led me to read a bit of online resources on the Kremlin's wine business, which turned out to be as intricate' as it was interesting. But to piece together the passages of this story, we must first have dinner with Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron (there was plenty of room at that long table).