A family business measured in generations rather than decades.

Marchesi Antinori dates its wine business to 1385. English Wikipedia says that in that year Giovanni di Piero Antinori joined Florence’s guild of winemakers, the date usually taken as the start of the family trade, and The Economist counted the company among the world’s oldest family businesses in a December 2004 article. The family name is also tied to a building: English Wikipedia says the Antinori bought the Palazzo Antinori, a fifteenth-century palace in the centre of Florence, in 1506, and that the family was given the title of marquis by the House of Habsburg-Lorraine in the eighteenth century, which is where the “Marchesi” in the company name comes from.

The modern estate was assembled in the twentieth century. English Wikipedia says a Piero Antinori bought several Chianti Classico vineyards in 1900, among them land at Tignanello, and that his son Niccolò Antinori made a Chianti in 1924 that used Bordeaux grape varieties. The present Piero Antinori took over from his father in 1966, the same article says.

His first decades in charge brought a partner from outside the family. The Drinks Business reported in a 2005 feature that Antinori formed a 50/50 partnership with the British brewer and drinks group Whitbread in 1981, and that when Whitbread withdrew in the early 1990s and sold its wine and spirits interests to Allied Domecq, Piero Antinori brought the company back under full family control. Shanken News Daily described the same turn of events in a 2025 interview with him, saying that a decade after taking on Whitbread he regained 100 percent of the company.

The family has stayed in charge since. Shanken News Daily reported in March 2025 that Piero’s three daughters, Albiera, Allegra and Alessia Antinori, all work in the business, with Albiera as president; the company describes Piero as its honorary president. In 2008 the family was the subject of a segment on the CBS programme 60 Minutes, reported by Morley Safer, and in 2014 Rizzoli published Piero Antinori’s own account of the family, The Hills of Chianti: The Story of a Tuscan Winemaking Family, in Seven Bottles, reviewed by Publishers Weekly that August.

A blend that stepped outside the rules, and a cellar hidden in a hill.

The wine most closely tied to the name is Tignanello, from the vineyard bought in 1900. English Wikipedia says its first vintage was 1971 and that, because its blend did not follow the rules of the Chianti Classico appellation of the time, it could not carry that name; Cabernet Sauvignon entered the blend from the 1975 vintage. English Wikipedia’s article on Super Tuscans calls Tignanello “one of the early Super Tuscans,” the name given to Tuscan wines that ignored the DOC regulations and were sold as humble vino da tavola until the looser IGT Toscana category arrived in 1992. The same article says Piero Antinori was one of the first to make such a wine, though it gives the very first place to Sassicaia, from his uncle Mario Incisa della Rocchetta’s estate at Bolgheri, for which Antinori held the sales agency. A sister wine, Solaia, from the neighbouring vineyard, followed in 1978, English Wikipedia says.

The company’s most visible design statement is architectural. In 2012 Antinori inaugurated Antinori nel Chianti Classico, a winery and headquarters at Bargino, between Florence and Siena, designed by the Florentine studio Archea Associati led by Marco Casamonti. The building is set largely into the hill. A January 2013 company press release said it would open to visitors in mid-March 2013, and the Dutch wine site Wijnkronieken covered the new building in November 2012.

Antinori’s Tuscan estate names, from Tignanello and Badia a Passignano in Chianti Classico to Pian delle Vigne in Montalcino, read like a map of Tuscany, and English Wikipedia dates the purchases of Badia a Passignano to 1987 and Pian delle Vigne to 1995.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Italian wine names: Antinori, Santa Margherita, Ruffino, Masi, Zonin, Bolla and Cavit. Wine brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to cooperatives owned by their growers and labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a restaurant list.

A wine brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its wine is actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its wine is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Tuscan family with vineyards on two continents.

The family’s reach extends well beyond Tuscany. English Wikipedia says Antinori acquired the Atlas Peak winery in California in 1985. In 2007 the founder of the Napa Valley winery Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Warren Winiarski, sold it to Ste. Michelle Wine Estates and Antinori, with Antinori holding a minority share, Decanter and Wine Spectator reported at the time. A joint announcement on 9 May 2023 said Marchesi Antinori would take full ownership of Stag’s Leap after sixteen years of partnership, and English Wikipedia says Antinori also took complete ownership of the Washington State winery Col Solare, another joint project with Ste. Michelle, in 2024.

At home the name is a common one in Florence, so context matters online: the Palazzo Antinori and the Piazza Antinori are places in the city, and the wine company trades as Marchesi Antinori.

For a design guide, Antinori shows how a family name, a date more than six centuries old and a building that disappears into its own vineyard can stand in for the loud marks most drinks brands rely on. Compare Laudemio Frescobaldi, the olive oil of another old Florentine wine family, and Capezzana, the Tuscan estate oil of an art-collecting family. For this guide we use Sangiovese red, Florentine gold and cypress green with a classical serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Antinori’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.