Architect Zaha Hadid designs bottle for Austria's Icon Hill

By Darrel Joseph

Published: 16 October, 2013

Austrian wine producer Leo Hillinger has released the first edition of his Icon Hill project, a premium red blend with a bottle specially designed by world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid.

This first Icon Hill, from the 2009 vintage, was introduced recently by Hillinger and Hadid at a glittering reception in Vienna's Albertina museum. The sleek, elongated smoky black glass bottle with exaggerated concave and convex lines was designed by Hadid along with her team including architectural partner Patrik Schumacher and lead architect Markus Planteu.

The wine was made from eight grape varieties, including Blaufränkisch and Syrah, organically grown in Hillinger's premium vineyards around the town of Jois near Austria's Lake Neusiedl (Neusiedlersee). Because just one bunch of grapes were yielded from each of the 30 to 50-year-old grape vines used for the wine, the Icon Hill 2009 has been produced in a limited edition run of 999 bottles. This, along with the collector status of the bottle, are reflected in the wine's ex-cellar price tag of €99.

Icon Hill 2009 underwent three segments of French barrique maturation: every 12 months, the wine was racked into new wood; bottling took place after a total of 36 months.

"It had been a dream of mine for a long time to have a bottle of my wine designed by Zaha Hadid. Now to have all of this realised is incredible," said Hillinger.

The Icon Hill 2009 marks the first time that Hadid has designed a wine bottle.

"Until now, I had never been asked to design a bottle for drinking," she said. "I actually wanted to design a water bottle, because I am always carrying water with me and I imagined to do a bottle that would look quite elegant. And I had always been asked to do glassware, blown glass, but never a wine bottle."

Hadid had embarked on wine design before: her wine pavilion for López de Heredia Viña Tondonia in Rioja was built between 2001 and 2006.

Throughout her stellar career, Hadid has received, among others, the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the Stirling Prize, and was awarded a DBE.

Hillinger said he will continue to produce Icon Hill only from very good vintages, such as 2009.