Marchesi Antinori
Tignanello
Toscana IGT
2016

The producer

Often described as “the wine that changed Chianti and Italy”!  Piero Antinori, taking over the centuries old family wine business as a young man, was the visionary who not only reduced the cropping of his best Sangiovese vineyard but also the one who added international variety Cabernet Sauvignon to the blend, which at the time was very unusual, and the one to insist of ageing of the wine in French barriques. 

Tenuta Tignanello is located in the heart of Chianti Classico, between Greve and Pesa, and the Tignanello vineyard consist of 57 ha of Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon planted on limestone rich soils 350 meters above sea level.

Tignanello was an immediate hit with the first two vintages – 1971 and 1975 – wowing the Italian wine world, and later the international wine community. Antinori grew into a wine empire and Tignanello, and its sibling Solaia, was lodged in the stellar firmament of international top wines.

The wine

The first Italian Sangiovese to be aged in barriques and the first Italian wine blended with international grape varieties – Cabernet Sauvignon in particular. Today Tignanello is usually a blend of varying proportions of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc. Ageing takes place during 14-16 months in partly new French and Hungarian oak barrels, followed by another 12 months in bottle.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.