The Wines of Villa Antinori
If yesterday was “Chrystal Day”, today is “Risa Day”.
I woke up with big welts from the mosquitoes. Fortunately none of them were on my face!
Florian, our cheerful young driver, picked us up at 9:30 to head to Antinori. As it happened, we had lots of time to spare so he kindly drove us up to the top of Michelangelo hill for some views (and pictures) of the city below. His car was also equipped with a mini fridge hat was loaded up with desperately needed COLD bottles of water.
The best out of 36 identical pictures
The Antinori winery was beautiful, very modern and AIR CONDITIONED. WE had some time to spare before the tour so we admired the vineyards through our cameras.
The winery is built into the side of the hill, and is designed to blend into the landscape. Lots of corten steel, and a staircase that resembles a corkscrew.
(A corkscrew!! I did NOT even pick up on that. Shameful, do I work in this business or not??)
Also apparent (to me) was how much Anthony von Mandl is inspired by the Antinori story which focuses heavily on the importance of family and respect for the land (in order to grow the best grapes). I will not be surprised to find out that his new Okanagan winery Martin’s Lane, named for his late father, looks an awful lot like this particular Antinori winery. In fact, Martin’s Lane’s focus on Pinot Noir is in keeping with the Antinori practice of focusing each winery on particular blends of wine. This one, for example, is the Chianti winery.
Our tour guide, Erica, was an american ex-pat from Oregon (or possibly Utah?) who moved to Italy 25 years ago to study, then planned to take a short break before starting a masters. A husband, 4 children and 20 years later, she is embarking on the career she had originally dreamed of.
- the cavernous barrel cellar, made up of the bricks that were fired using soil excavated from the winery construction site. The tiles let the entire room “breathe”.
- the super-large barrels used to age Chiantis
- the medium large barrels of Hungarian oak (yay Andi and Kinga)
- the small barrels aging the Vin Santo, also in Hungarian oak
- Slovakian oak barrels which are very tannic and used for the big batches.
- the one single crush room that processes all of the 3 million bottles produced at this winery
- the olive oil press
- the stainless steel tanks used for the “ordinary” Chiantis
- the art exhibit and the very cool old style press with notes of da Vinci
The winery puts out 2 million bottles of chianti classico per year. Internationally they product 27 million bottles of wine annually. Vinsanto is a type of dessert wine that has been made the same way for centuries. The wine is derived from dried grapes (“raisins”?), which are hand-picked slightly early to ensure a sour fruit and then dried under the roof of a barn. The wine is traditionally paired with almond biscotti. Antinori produces this type of wine and respects the traditional process used. The type of mould on the grapes is called “mufato”, which is a kind of “Noble Mould”.
Orciania is either the container, the room or the process of making olive oil. 2014 was a devastating year for the “green mold”, leading to world-wide olive oil shortages. Normally the huge vases are buried in the floor. Erica described the process that Italians use to harvest their own olives, first raking down the olives from the branches of tress, where they are collected on tarps below.
In the beautiful tasting room we were all set to taste the “North American” Antinori Reserva 2012, the 2012 Marchese Antinori Chianti Classico, and the Badia a Passignano chianti classico 2010.
Ready for the tasting!
As Erica was pouring the Marchese, Andi noticed she was actually pouring from an open 2011, but the unopened bottle was a 2012. After a momentary concern that she wasn’t actually supposed to take the 2011 bottle, Andi joked “let’s taste both!”, and Erica replied “actually, why don’t we!?”. So she he grabbed another set of glasses and we were now tasting 4 wines instead of 3!
Erica guided us through the wine tasting, commenting on the layers of flavours: fruit, flowers, spice and undertones. We evaluated each wine by sight, texture, smell and taste. The most important thing I learned from Erica is that you have to let the wine wash over your gums to really taste it. She urged us to experience the “persistence” of the wine on the palate, as that is the hallmark of quality.
We learned:
- Red fruits: chiantis always have notes of cherry, and often other dark fruit – blackberry, raspberry, blueberry. sometimes ripe, sometimes cooked.
- the floral notes can be geraniums (“who put the geraniums into the wine?”) or maybe iris, violet and rose
- the spice notes are clove, liquorice and vanilla, and some hint of pepper.
- There are vibrant tannins
- Produced in 1928 for the first time for the US world’s fair
- This was first bottled in the basket
- The wine is ruby red, transparent, made from 90% san giovese grapes and 1% unspecified
- The aftertaste, with wood notes, makes it all come together
- For this we did a “vertical tasting”, moving from the youngest to the oldest
- 2012 – Ruby red. Combination of cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc grapes. Dominant flavour is cherries.
- 2011 – Flavours of caramel, vanilla, and sugar. (By the way, this is what Erica pointed out. I could only taste leather.)
- Aged in 300 litre Hungarian oak cask
- 100% San Giovese grapes, not a reserve but a “Grande Selectione”, which means it is the top 10% of chianti classico.
- Deeper red colour
- Flavours of cooked cherries, black fruits and notes of black cherries.
- Dried flowers, citrus, iris, and some hint of pepper
- “I’m trying for the blueberry” – Sofia
I personally smelled hay, so there you go. (Better than me, I kept tasting leather…)
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Our tour also included lunch with (more) wine.
We ate:
- A meat and cheese plate with prosciutto, salami, olives, pasta frittatas, two kinds of pecorino and a soft cheese that was just like butter. Wine to compliment was Scabrezza 2014.
- Delicious olive oil that was made at the winery.
- White beans, cooked spinach, and a ridiculously huge steak cooked super rare (for me, Chrystal, Kinga and Jane) and medium rare (for Andi and Sofia). The steak was sprinkled with large grain salt and finely diced rosemary.
- Wine pairing was Bramasole La Braccesca 2009 Syrah. Soooooo unbelievably good!
- Pistachio biscotti (“the best biscotti I have ever had in my life”) and the BEST surprise of all … a bottle of one of the 10,000 made of Vinsanto 2010, “saved for the Mark Anthony Group party”. Yay!!!
It was absolutely delicious. A beautiful dessert wine reminiscent of a tawny port, only lighter and more fruit notes. OMG!!!
At the winery store, we picked up a bottle of wine for our driver as a thank you gift, having noticed that gifts seem to be better-received that tips of money.
Back in the van, the group flatly refused to sing John Denver songs on the way to San Gimignano. I really need to work on my sales pitch. In San Gimignano, we had about an hour to walk the length of the town and back. It was a much more pleasant experience with a group of people that wanted to be there, but still quite touristy and sometimes overpriced.
The Towers of San Gimignano
Chrystal and I had gelato in a little place recommended by Florian, even though i was ready to explode from lunch! Our selections were pistachio, blueberry & ricotta, coconut, chocolate. i leave it to you to figure out who had what. We also walked up to the top of a little monastery to get some lovely views before we had to head back to the van.
Meanwhile, Sofia befriended the elderly.
Back at the apartment, the non-functioning fridge is really starting to grate – mostly due to the total lack of cold water, but the chef leftovers are also starting to suffer. A couple of us sent Luca messages asking him to send someone to look at it, and in the meantime, in protest, i believe we will start upping our use of the air conditioning. The evening was another one spent on the patio taking even more pictures of the Duomo dome.
Last thoughts of the day: At this point in the trip, none of you are driving me crazy yet. This is a good sign.
When people ask me what was the highlight of my Florence trip I always mention the winery tour. What a fun day with having our own personal and very friendly driver to give us a bit of a tour and take us to and from the winery so we didn’t have to worry about drinking and driving.
The Antinori Winery was so amazing to tour and I think the wine I tasted in that very dark almost clinical tasting room was the best wine my mouth has ever come in contact with. As Erica said, having a simple room with little distraction helps the flavour of the wine come out. And of course the lunch was some of the best food I had in Italy but the true highlight for me was……the Vinsanto! Yummy, Yummy! Thanks for organizing this Risa! BTW – I didn’t get the corkscrew staircase thing either. Thank you Chrystal!