"The 2020 Bianco Appia Antica 400, a blend of Sémillon and Malvasia, lifts up with a unique bouquet that keeps you coming back to the glass over and over again, as confectioner’s sugar blows off to reveal peach skins, candied lemon, a bit of custard, ripe yellow apple and, finally, hints of vanilla bean. It’s silky, almost glycerol-like in feel, soothing the palate with its round and pliant textures, while delivering a mineral-packed array of ripe orchard fruits. This lingers long, yet subtly so, leaning more toward a mix of green melon and kiwi."
90 Points - Eric Guido, Vinous, June 2021
This story starts with an eccentric Italian prince, who planted (mostly) Bordeaux varieties on the outskirts of Rome in the 1940s and became one of Italy’s pioneering (if reclusive) organic winemakers. The price was one of the first winemakers to plant international grapes in Italian soil. He cultivated everything organically on the farm decades before organic agriculture became a trend.
The story re-starts, two generations later, with three of his granddaughters—Allegra, Albiera, and Alessia Antinori (daughters of Italian wine icon Piero Antinori of Tignanello fame), scions of one of Italy’s largest wine companies—reviving vineyards on some of that land and crafting wines like “Appia Antica 400.”
Fattoria Fiorano first gained acclaim in the 1950s when Alberico befriended two notable wine experts: Tancredi Biondi Santi, the “Father of Brunello”, who became his mentor, and Luigi Veronelli, one of Italy’s leading wine writers. Veronelli declared Fiorano among the best producers in all of Italy. In the 2000s, Prince Alberico became an unlikely cult superstar after releasing a huge tranche of back-vintage wines from his cellar—wines that are still being tasted and talked-about among collectors today!
The Antinori women are channeling their grandfather's spirit in wines like today’s Bianco Appia Antica 400. Pour this wine in a glass and there’s no denying its empirical excellence. It’s an objectively excellent white wine in every regard, delivering texture, tension, soaring aromatics, and profound minerality that could easily take first place in the "summer white" category.