Antinori

Piero Antinori, whose family traces its winemaking history to 1385, is the dynamic head of the Florentine house of Marchesi Antinori, leader of the modern renaissance in Tuscan wine. His first innovation, Tignanello, is regarded as the most influential wine of Italy’s modern era, though its production was clearly inspired by Sassicaia the Tuscan Cabernet which Antinori also launched on the market in the 1970s. Tignanello’s first vintage was 1971, when Sangiovese was blended with Canaiolo and white Trebbianco and Malvasia in a wine that adhered to the standards of Chianti Classico (where it is produced) but was pointedly kept outside of the appellation. Working with enologist Giacomo Tachis, Antinori upgraded the Tignanello formula in 1975 by blending Sangiovese with about 20% Cabernet Sauvingnon, a revelation in style that fostered a generation of red wines known as Super-Tuscans. Cabernet gave a welcome boost to a wine matured in small barrels of French oak, the barriques that were then curiosities in Tuscany but have since become fixtures in cellars up and down Italy. Tignanello takes the mane of large vineyard on the Antinori Santa Cristina estate. Within it lies the plot called Solaia, whose name applies to a blend of Cabernet and Sauvignon with Sangiovese at 20%. Solaia was ranked first by the American journal The Wine Spectator in its list of top 100 wines of the world in 2000. But Tignanello remains the house’s premier wine because of its pivotal role in modern enology and its continuing class as a red whose character is quintessentially Tuscan. Antinori’s wine interests extend to Umbria (Castello della Sala), Piedmont (Prunotto) and Puglia (Vingeti del Sud), as well as California (Atlas Peak) and Hungary (Bataapati). But the prime focus remains on Tuscan wines, produced at the rate of 14.5 million bottles a year, recently augmented by the estates of La Braccesca for Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and Pian delle Vigne for Brunello di Montalcino.