The wine production of the Antinori family boasts, among its ranks, real wine monuments, able to warm the hearts of their fans around the world. On the other hand, it is still one of the oldest Maison, now in its twenty-sixth generation, with Albiera, Alessia and Allegra Antinori, daughters of the Marquis Piero Antinori, after more than 600 years of history. According to official sources, the founder, a certain Accarisio di Antinoro di Combiate, seems to have been the owner of agricultural land in the area of Passignano, halfway between Florence and Siena, as early as 1179. The official date that sanctioned the entry of this family into the world of wine, however, is 1385 when Giovanni Piero Antinori was admitted into the guild that protected the interests of Florentine wine producers, l’Arte dei Vinattieri.
Antinori’s wine must have been really good, so much that Francesco Redi, in 1685, praised its quality in his famous comic-lyric poem Bacco in Toscana. To get to the winery as we know it today, however, we have to get to 1898 when Ludovico and Piero founded the Marchesi L&P Antinori, with the aim of putting order and organize, in a centralized way, the various estates scattered throughout Tuscany. Since then, this farm has passed from the hands of Piero’s son, Niccolò, under whose impulse it was expanded with the purchase of the Castello della Sala, in Umbria, and then to his nephew Piero, a great innovator who, in addition to having conducted a wide range of experiments in the vineyard and in the cellar, stimulated his team to produce the great wines that made this House so famous.
With the passing of time the Antinori family has progressively extended its range of action, leaving Tuscany (and in some cases Italy too) as in the case of the Marchese Antinori Tenuta Montenisa, in Franciacorta. It is an estate purchased in 1999 whose vineyards are planted with Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Noir from which are obtained the precious sparkling wines of the homonymous denomination Franciacorta DOCG.
One of the most prestigious wines of this estate is Blanc de Nois Conte Aymo, a Pinot Noir Millesimato that takes the name of one of the most prestigious owners of the estate, and creator of the famous car race “Millemiglia”: Count Aymo Maggi. The grapes, after a careful manual harvest, are pressed with extreme delicacy, with the aim of obtaining exclusively the free-run must, the fruit of the first pressing, the purest. After a first fermentation, at controlled temperature, in stainless steel tanks, the wine is bottled and left to referment, and rest on the lees, for more than 5 years before disgorging, filling and final closing, and marketing.
The 2016 vintage has a very intense straw yellow color, with golden streaks, gentle perlage, and an olfactory range that opens on notes of red orange, kumquat, red currant and croissant, followed by gooseberries, sultanas, hawthorn and toasted hazelnut, with final echoes of carpentry and damp chalk. The taste strikes immediately for the bubbles creaminess, followed by a delicate softness and a good acidity; all enriched by the return of citrus and spices that mark the sip up to a good length finish.
Rating: 90/100
Want to find out what I can do for you? Click here!
