As president of Marchesi Antinori, Piero Antinori has shaped the company over the past quarter-century into one whose wines are prized by connoisseurs around the world.

Piero Antinori was born in 1938, the second of three children of Marchese Niccolo Antinori and Carlotta della Gherardesca He grew up in the family’s 15th-century Palazzo Antinori in Piazza Antinori in the center of Renaissance Florence, where the family has lived and worked since 1506.

Summers and weekends were spent on the family’s wine-producing tenute, or farm estates, where Piero learned winemaking. He began drinking and tasting wine at fifteen, “because for our tradition, for our history, wine has always been an integral part of life,” says Piero. At eighteen, he became more directly involved in the business and began tasting wines from around the world.

Following high school, he obtained his degree in Economics and Commercial Science at the University of Florence while his summers were spent traveling widely and working with international wine-makers, such as world-famed oenologist Emile Peynaud, to become a trained wine technician.

Piero joined Marchesi Antinori in 1962, beginning as a sales supervisor. Many positions later he became managing director and president on his father’s retirement in 1966, “My father gave me full responsibility and I had to prove to him that he made the right choice,” Piero has said.

 

For years, he has combined progressive and original techniques with traditional ones to dramatically improve and redefine winemaking in Italy. With the 1971 vintage, he produced a new breed of wine that ignored Chianti Classico regulations and therefore could only be called a Vino da tavola della Toscana. Named for its vineyard, it became the prototype in a category of wines that is today called Super Tuscan.

Among the many positions he has held, from 1970-1981 he was chairman of Consorzio Vino Orvieto, then Instituto del Vino Novello Toscano; in 1975 he served as vice president and one of ten producers to create Istituto Spumante Classico Italiano; in 1982 he became chairman and one of four producers to create Galestro; in 1984, in response to his spearheading efforts over 15 years, the Italian government changed Chianti DOC regulations, to DOCG status to allow for the production of world-class wines; in May, 1987, he was elected to a three-year term as president of Federvini, the Italian association of wine and spirits producers, exporters and importers of which he is still a board member.

Other boards on which he has served include Unione Agricoltori Vini Milano, Unione Agricoltori firenze and Livorno; Florence’s Fondaria, Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, and Eridania-Beghin-Say in Paris. He is also a member of academia Italiana della Vite e del Vino and Academia dei Georgofili.