Disrupting the old boys of wine
Blockchain-powered tech allows new money to buy old wines with more confidence
Alfonso de Gaetano, founder and CEO of start-up Crurated, hopes to democratise access to the world’s most exclusive wines. Dark Luxury went to meet him at the recently launched Josephine in Marylebone.
The €2,000 bottle of 1996 Grivot Burgundy should have been the crown jewel of an important dinner. Alfonso de Gaetano had carefully selected it from a prestigious auction house, anticipating the moment he would uncork it to impress his new boss visiting Dubai from Europe. What emerged was a profound disappointment that would lead him to attempt to reshape an entire industry.
“The wine was utterly mute, completely tasteless”, de Gaetano recalls, the sting of the oxidised wine still palpable years later. It was an expensive lesson in the opacity and risk that plague the fine wine market. A lesson that would eventually lead to the creation of Crurated, the blockchain-powered wine selling platform which is trying to challenge centuries of tradition in the premium wine trade.
For de Gaetano, this wasn’t an isolated incident. Between 30 and 40 per cent of the wines he purchased at auction were of poor quality, he says. “Very few people buy from the auctions anymore because they had the same experiences as me”, he said. Whether this statistic reflects broader market reality or simply de Gaetano’s particular misfortune remains unclear.
The journey from that Dubai apartment to his mission to disrupt the wine industry began far from the vineyards of Burgundy. Now 47, de Gaetano has navigated several career transformations. He played professional football in Italy as a young man, before an ankle injury ended his aspirations.
After that, he worked in management consulting and eventually moved to Google. He spent over a decade leading sales across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and helping clients like the New York Times more effectively buy advertising space online. It was during this corporate ascent that wine evolved from a casual interest into what he describes as a sophisticated passion.
De Gaetano had discovered something during his Google years that would prove crucial.