Seven hundred years of history, a family business for twenty-six generations: this is one of the reasons why Piero Antinori, honorary president of Marchesi Antinori, one of the most appreciated and famous wine brands in the world, considers himself not so much a business owner as a custodian, whose task is to leave the company to the next generations stronger and more prosperous than he found it.
Antinori’s history began as far back as 1385 when Giovanni di Piero Antinori joined the Arte Fiorentina dei Vinattieri.
Of course, the company’s ancient roots and its focus on tradition are very important, but they have never been a brake on innovation. The winery, in fact, has never stopped evolving, both through the development of new areas suited to the production of quality wines and through continuous experimentation in terms of native grape selections, different fermentation times, new vinification techniques, and much more.
Tignanello: a splendid fifty-year-old
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Tignanello, a symbol of modern Italian oenology that bears the signature of Piero Antinori. Released on the market in 1974, it was actually born in the late 1960s when Piero Antinori was looking for a way out of the crisis that the entire wine sector in Tuscany was experiencing. With the help of the French oenologist Emile Peynaud, a professor at the University of Bordeaux, Antinori studied an entirely new wine, going beyond the rules of the Chianti specification. The result was a contradictory wine: on paper, a ‘table wine’, in reality, more expensive than the others and of such superior quality that it was considered the progenitor of the ‘Super Tuscan’ wines.
The growth of great vineyards
In 1987, the Antinori family became the owner of over three hundred hectares of vineyards surrounding the Badia a Passignano, an ancient medieval abbey renowned for being among the oldest dedicated to the production of Chianti Classico. 1988 saw the production of the first Badia di Passignano Chianti Classico Riserva, released on the market three years later.
1995 is the year of the Pian delle Vigne Estate, 186 hectares of vineyards near Montalcino. The year 2000 saw the release of the first Brunello di Montalcino Pian delle Vigne. In the same year, Solaia vintage 1997, from the vineyard of the same name adjacent to Tignanello, was crowned the best wine in the world by Wine Spectator magazine. It is the first Italian wine to reach the top of the 100 best wines in the world ranking, drawn up yearly by the magazine.
Bolgheri and Matarocchio
Matarocchio is an elegant, profound wine that perfectly expresses the terroir from which it comes, namely that of the Tenuta Guado al Tasso in Bolgheri, an extension of over three hundred hectares planted with vines – Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Pétit Verdot and Vermentino – on the coast of the Upper Maremma. The area is characterised by a climate mitigated by the proximity of the sea.
It was produced for the first time in 2007, after a particularly favourable harvest.
An important acknowledgement
Today, the Group’s president is Albiera Antinori, Piero’s daughter and the first woman at the helm of the winery, after twenty-five generations that have seen only men at the helm. In 2023, the winery acquired the Stag’s Leap winery in California’s Napa Valley, marking an Italian company’s first acquisition in this area. This year, moreover, Drinks International’s prestigious ranking of ‘the world’s most admired wine Brands 2023’ put an Italian winery on the podium for the first time in the history of this authoritative ranking, and that is the Florentine Marchesi Antinori!
Congratulations to those who have been bringing the excellence of Italian wine to the world for generations!
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