PIERO ANTINORI: “WE’RE BEING INVESTIGATED BY MISTAKE. BOTTLES BACK ON SALE BY JULY 1. DAMAGE TO OUR IMAGE THAT IS DIFFICULT TO QUANTIFY… IN JUST A FEW HOURS WE HAVE ALREADY RECEIVED ORDERS FOR HALF OF OUR BRUNELLO DI MONTALCINO 2003”

The Antinori group has been officially freed from the Brunello investigations. The judiciary of Siena has “released” the 120,000 bottles of Brunello di Montalcino Pian delle Vigne 2003 that were, together with many other types of Brunello of the same vintage, under suspicion of having been produced with grapes other than Sangiovese which is the only one permitted by the Brunello disciplinary.
But the accusations regarding Antinori have now been disclaimed after the legal analyses conducted revealed the purity of the wine. Results that have brought relief to the Marchese Piero Antinori, president of the Florentine wine making company. In a recent interview with the newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore

Antinori commented on the positive results of the investigation but also highlighted that the damage to the company’s image is “difficult to quantify”.

He also talked about the situation his company is now in and the hypothesis of changing the rules for Brunello production.


Marchese Antinori explained how his company’s wine became involved in the investigation: it appears that three hectares of vineyards were declared to be Sangiovese when they were actually Petit Verdot, but, Antinori noted, this was an insignificant technical error because the vineyards are under the Sant’Antimo label which actually allows the use of other grapes in production. “The suspicion” – explained Antinori – “was that we were using these vineyards for Brunello production, but this was not true and the laboratory analyses have demonstrated our correctness in an indisputable way”. The investigation had, however, temporarily blocked the 2003 vintage from being sold and has caused problems for the company, above all for its image because, “we appeared in the media to be scam artists”.


As for the hypothesis of changing Brunello production rules, proposed in light of the recent scandal, Antinori is contrary. Though he does believe that a way to avoid future scandals of this type could be the introduction of, “a minimum of tolerance in respect to the obligatory 100% purity, let’s say between 3 and 5%, maximum 7%. It is the same amount given to vine growers when planting new vineyards. Even analyses have a minimum tolerance”. A limit that Antinori believes could be introduced as a modification to law 164 that regulates the disciplinary.

Speaking of the government, President Antinori also gave a positive vote for the work that is being done by the Italian Minister of Agriculture, Luca Zaia, who, “moved promptly and did all that was possible to free the American market. It is also opportune to introduce systems of analysis that today are technically possible, to verify the variety of vineyards, the origin of grapes and the vintage of wines. More controls and severity, but within a reasonable framework of rules”.

Antinori concluded his interview with a comment on the current market situation (on which the Antinori group still manages to grow at a rate of 5% with earnings of 135 million euros registered in 2007): “After we advised our foreign distributors that the 2003 vintage was back on sale, in just a few hours we received orders for almost half of our production”.