Tenuta Guado al Tasso By Antinori Bolgheri Superiore DOC

Producer history

The Antinori family has been in wine since 1385, when Giovanni di Piero Antinori joined the Florentine winemakers' guild, and the house markets itself under the banner of twenty-six generations of family ownership, a figure that appears on Antinori's site only as a link to 26generazioni.com rather than as a stated fact on the estate or company pages. Viticulture at Guado al Tasso itself goes back much further than the Antinori tenure: the Della Gherardesca family began growing vines on the site in the late 1600s, and Guido Alberto Della Gherardesca (1780-1854), majordomo to Grand Duke Leopold II, was a driving figure in its vineyard development. In the 1930s the property was inherited by Carlotta Della Gherardesca Antinori, Piero Antinori's mother, and her sister. The estate today runs to roughly 320 hectares under vine within the Bolgheri DOC and grows Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Vermentino, Grenache, Viognier and Semillon. Alongside this flagship it produces Matarocchio, Cont'Ugo, Il Bruciato, Scalabrone rosato and a Vermentino. Antinori's better-known Tignanello and Solaia come from vineyards in the Chianti Classico zone, not from this estate.

Signature pairings

• Roast rack of lamb with rosemary — A Cabernet-led Bordeaux blend and lamb is a structural match: the meat's fat softens the dense tannin the producer describes, and rosemary picks up the wine's licorice and herb edge.
• Dry-aged ribeye, charred over coals — Char and rendered fat meet the new French oak's cedar and the wine's blackcurrant core. The mouth-filling tannic texture Antinori cite needs this much protein to show as texture rather than grip.
• Massaman beef curry (แกงมัสมั่นเนื้อ) — Massaman is the mildest of the Thai curries and its coconut fat, cardamom and cinnamon coat the palate, buffering tannin while the warm spice mirrors the wine's tobacco and licorice. The slow-braised beef does the rest.