Marchesi Antinori: A Selection of the Current Roster

26 generations of Tuscan heritage.

The Antinori family has been in the wine business about as long as any of the old families of Tuscany, the Mosel and Alsace. The family enterprise dates to 1385, when Giovanni di Piero Antinori joined the Guild of Winemakers in Florence. The Antinori story since that time, and increasingly in the 20th and 21st centuries, has been a saga of acquisition and innovation. While the family continues to produce wines from different estates in the Chianti Classico and Chianti Classico Riserva categories, the true avant-garde impulse has lain in the creation of “Bordeaux-style” red wines that employ not only the typical grape varieties — cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot — but the implementation of small French oak barriques instead of the tradition large Slovakian barrels. One cannot emphasize enough what a revolution Tignanello 1971 caused when it was released in 1974. It simply changed the face of the Italian wine industry, and not just in Tuscany.