Price: £175 per ticket
Time: 3:45PM - 5PM
Hosts: Renzo Cotarella, CEO Marchesi Antinori and Chief Winemaker and Alessia Antinori, Vice-President of Antinori
Co-host: James Button, Decanter Italy Regional Editor

The Antinori family has been committed to the art of making fine wine for six generations. For this masterclass, Chief Winemaker Renzo Cotarella will transport guests to the Guada al Tasso Estate on the Tuscan coast of Maremma to taste two landmark wines: the flagship Guada al Tasso, a Cabernet-predominant blend, and the 100% Cabernet Franc, single-parcel Matarocchio, which is made only in the best years. As they taste wines going back through four decades, guests will see how the effects of light, wind and sea are expressed in these two very different, very special wines.

Born in 1954 near Orvieto, Cotarella graduated from the University of Agrarian Science in Perugia in 1978. His love for wine led to him becoming Director and, later, President, of the Consorzio per la Tutela dei Vini di Orvieto. In 1981 he became Director and Winemaker of Castello della Sala, a historic Umbrian estate owned by the Antinori family. He became MD of Marchesi Antinori in 1998 and, in 2005, CEO as well as Chief Oenologist. Cotarella is a specialist in match soil types and grape varieties.

The youngest of Piero Antinori’s three daughters, Alessia has been Vice President since 2016. Naturally drawn to winemaking, she participated in all harvests at the family’s Tignanello estate in Chianti Classico and Tenuta al Guado estate in Bolgheri since 1996, and in 1998 she graduated from the Agrarian University of Milan with a degree in Viticulture and Oenology. She has worked as a winemaker for the family business and in export and sales, spending lengthy periods in India and New York and travelling extensively as a representative of the family business.

James is Decanter’s regional editor for Italy, responsible for all of Decanter's Italian content in print and online. He started his wine career in retail, successfully completing the WSET Level 4 Diploma in 2010 and subsequently managing the fine wine department of a startup wine company in London. In 2016 he joined Decanter as digital sub-editor, where he managed commissions and content for the fledgling Decanter Premium. James has judged at several wine competitions both nationally and internationally - including the Decanter World Wine Awards - and hosts masterclasses on a variety of topics relating to Italian wine.