Antinori: Keeping It All In The Family

Family Has Run Wineries For 623 Years, With No Plans To Sell

(CBS)  And in his birthplace, Florence, the city that gave birth to the Renaissance - that flowering of art, science and the good life - he leads a visitor to a small window to the past. Hundreds of years ago, an Antinori cellar master sat waiting for customers to knock.

"The cellar master would pass a bottle of Chianti wine, and would receive the money back. This has been in operation until a couple of centuries ago," Piero Antinori explains.

It's recent history by Antinori's standard: for 623 years, various Antinori have kept the business going, despite war, plague, political intrigue and the shifting tastes of consumers. The family tree shows a bumper crop of Antinori who made their mark not just in wine, but in every aspect of Italian life.

"In business. In politics. In church," Piero Antinori explains.

"So the family always made sure back then that all bets were covered, correct?" Safer asks.

"I think it was a bit the concept, yes," he replies.

There were poets and priests, rogues and rascals. In 1576, Francesco de’ Medici, the grand duke of Tuscany, had one Antinori strangled for his undue attentions to Bianca, the duke's wife. In the 1700s, another Antinori cultivated Pope Clement XII as an important customer. The pontiff - who commissioned the building of Rome's Trevi Fountain - decided to throw a few coins the Antinoris' way.

"We have some correspondence saying that the Pope used to like very much the wines of our family and he wanted to order more," Piero Antinori explains.

But the family history lining the shelves of the marchese's office says precious little about the wives and daughters in the Antinori family tree. It's a fact not lost on Albiera, Allegra and Alessia.

Asked if there are any interesting women in those 26 generations, Albiera Antinori tells Safer, "I'm sure there are some women. But women in history, in the past time, even if unless they were special, they were not."

"Considered," Alessia adds.

"To be mentioned," Albiera says.

"It’s true. Because when I went to agricultural university in northern Italy, in Milan, we were two women. And the rest were all men. Very lucky," Alessia says.