GUADO AL TASSO
The Bolgheri estate of the Antinori — six hundred years of one wine family, brought to the Tuscan coast.
Six centuries of doing one thing, and doing it with passion: making wine.
The Estate · The Family · The Craft
Six Hundred Years of One Family
The story of this estate is the story of one of the oldest wine dynasties on earth. Since 1385, when Giovanni di Piero Antinori joined the Florentine winemakers' guild, the Arte dei Vinattieri,, the Antinori have made wine for more than six centuries and twenty-six generations — always, as the family says, with their own hands, and always in the first person. Guado al Tasso is that immense history, carried to the sea.
The Estate Divided Between Brothers
The Bolgheri lands come to the Antinori through the Belvedere estate — bound, like Sassicaia and Ornellaia, to the della Gherardesca, the ancient family that held vast swathes of the Tuscan coast. When the property is divided between two brothers, the younger, Lodovico, founds Ornellaia; and the elder, Piero Antinori, takes the heart of the old estate to build Guado al Tasso. Two icons, born of one inheritance.
The Bolgheri Amphitheatre
Guado al Tasso lies in the natural amphitheatre of Bolgheri — a sweep of vineyard cradled by hills and open to the cooling breezes of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Its name recalls the badger's ford, the crossing of a wild creature on this once-untamed coast. On gravelly, maritime soils close to those of the Médoc, the Bordeaux varieties find a home of rare balance and ripeness.
Piero Antinori, the Marchese
The estate bears the vision of Marchese Piero Antinori, the man who did more than any other to remake Italian wine in the twentieth century — creator of Tignanello and Solaia, the Super Tuscans that broke the old rules in Chianti. At Bolgheri he brings that same revolutionary spirit to the coast, planting Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc where his family had never made wine before.
Gravel, Sea and the Bordeaux Grapes
The vineyards run across the warm, well-drained soils of the amphitheatre, planted to Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Syrah. The maritime climate — bright days, sea-cooled nights — gives wines of power married to freshness. From the first the estate is conceived not as a copy of Bordeaux, but as the Antinori reading of what the Bolgheri coast can give.
The Flagship of the Amphitheatre
The estate's flagship, the Bolgheri Superiore Guado al Tasso, is a wine of dark, dense power — blackberry and plum, Mediterranean herbs, spice and plush tannin — among the benchmarks of the appellation. Around it stand Il Bruciato and Cont'Ugo and the white Vermentino, a range that carries the Antinori name across every table of the Bolgheri coast.
Passed Down in the First Person
What the Antinori carry to Bolgheri is not only capital but a way of working — six hundred years of independence, the family having steered its own course through the Renaissance, through wars and centuries of change, never selling its name. At Guado al Tasso the same principle holds: the long view of a house that measures time not in vintages but in generations.
A Door on the Coast
Guado al Tasso is also the Antinori's door onto the Bolgheri coast — an estate of hospitality among the cypresses and the vines, where visitors meet the maritime face of a Florentine dynasty. Here the family that built the great Antinori nel Chianti Classico winery extends its welcome to the sea, the tasting of the wine inseparable from the place that gives it birth.
The Twenty-Sixth Generation
The Antinori are today led into their twenty-sixth generation by Piero's three daughters — Albiera, Allegra and Alessia — the family firmly in the hands of those who carry the name. Guado al Tasso, one of the jewels of their estates across Italy and the world, passes to a new generation with the same charge: to keep faith, in the first person, with six centuries of wine.
One of the Great Estates of Bolgheri
Today Guado al Tasso stands among the great estates of Bolgheri — the coastal anchor of an empire of terroirs that the Antinori farm from Chianti to Montalcino and beyond. It is the proof that the oldest of families could arrive on a young and daring coast and, with the same passion, make it unmistakably their own.
Walk the Saga
From a guild membership in 1385 and six hundred years of one family, through an inheritance divided between brothers and the revolutionary hand of Piero Antinori, to the Bordeaux-blend power of the Bolgheri amphitheatre — Guado al Tasso is the Antinori by the sea. To taste it is to drink six centuries of a single family, carried to the Tuscan coast.
Tenuta Guado al Tasso in Bolgheri — the coastal estate of the Antinori, one of the oldest wine families in the world, in the natural amphitheatre of the Bolgheri DOC. Taste the Bordeaux-blend power of a house that has made wine for six hundred years and twenty-six generations.
Walk the Saga.