Antinori Tignanello

Why we follow Antinori Tignanello

The estate

The Antinori family have been in wine since Giovanni di Piero Antinori joined the Florentine winemakers' guild in 1385 — twenty-six generations, still family run. Piero Antinori is honorary president; his daughter Albiera has been president since 2016, with Allegra and Alessia alongside her. Tenuta Tignanello sits at San Casciano Val di Pesa, on the hills between the Greve and Pesa valleys, inside Chianti Classico. The property is recorded from 1346 and has belonged to the Antinori since the mid-1800s.

The vineyards

319 hectares in all, about 165 of them under vine, at 350 to 400 metres facing south-west. The soil is Pliocene marine marlstone, rich in limestone, with the stony alberese and flaky galestro that Sangiovese wants. The Tignanello vineyard is 77 hectares of that, worked as more than forty individual plots. Solaia is a separate 20 hectares on the same hill, the sunnier section — the name means the place of the sun. The estate served as Antinori's viticultural laboratory through the 1970s, trialling vine density, pruning and selection. There is no organic or biodynamic certification.

In the glass

In 1970 the parcel was bottled on its own as a Chianti Classico Riserva. In 1971 Antinori dropped the denomination, named the wine Tignanello and sold it as table wine — because the rules of the day required white grapes in the blend and forbade the Bordeaux varieties they wanted. Giacomo Tachis, working alongside Emile Peynaud, put Sangiovese into French barriques for the first time. The white grapes went for good in 1975 and the present Sangiovese and Cabernet formula dates from 1982. It remains Toscana IGT rather than Chianti Classico. Roughly 80 to 85 per cent Sangiovese with Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, varying by vintage; fermented in truncated conical tanks, malolactic in small oak, twelve to fifteen months in French barrels with a little Hungarian, mostly new, then a year in bottle. It is bottled only in vintages that earn it. There was no Tignanello in 1972, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1984, 1992 or 2002.

With Lamont’s

Offered through the Private Cellar Selection. Register your interest and we will contact you when the next allocation is confirmed.

Tignanello and Solaia are both allocated. Solaia is made only in exceptional years and in far smaller quantity — it was not produced in 1980, 1981, 1983, 1984 or 1992. Register your interest and we will contact you ahead of the next release.