Sassicaia - What Else Needs Needs To Be Said?
Tenuta San Guido
Castiglioncello, Bolgheri
What makes a wine truly great? Is it the careful hands which support the vines through its many stages of growth? Is it the result of place and the intricate dance between soil, grape and sunshine? Or perhaps it’s the winemaker, who coaxes and prods the bubbling process in the vain hope of multiplying greatness?
It is said that a wine of distinction must possess, at least in part, the essence of all the above. Tenuta San Guido’s Sassicaia is the rarest of cases when the grapes, place, and people are so perfectly aligned that achieving greatness is only a breath away. Imagine now, that the place never grew grapes and the vines were born across the mountains in France. Does this sound like the ideal circumstances for the greatest wine Italy has ever known?
“the origins of my experiment date back to the years between 1921 and 1925 when, as a student in Pisa and often a guest of the Salviati Dukes in Migliarino, I drank a wine produced from one of their vineyards…which had the same unmistakable “bouquet” as an aged Bordeaux….”
The Story Begins…
The unlikely story of Sassicaia begins with the love of a grape, Cabernet Sauvignon, and the devotion to one day see it flourish in Italy. It was 1840 in Piemonte, and a nobleman by the name of Marchesi di Leopoldo Incisa della Rocchetta found himself partially paralyzed at the age of 48, due to an unfortunate illness. The Marchesi was a man of many passions, and on his estate along the Tanaro river in Piemonte he envisioned the great European wine Bordeaux living on his native soils. In order to satisfy these aristocratic cravings, he began a treatise, first in 1862, then again in 1869, in which he was the very first to delineate Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc as grapes which could potentially flourish in the rocky soils of Italy. This was the first mention of these grapes and the idea of a Bordeaux-wine made exclusively in Italy began its long gestation in the minds and hearts of the Incisa della Rochetta family.
Two generations later, his grandsonson Mario Incisa della Rochetta was a young student at the University of Pisa. There he had the same dream his father had many years before, to make a wine to rival the great Bordeaux produced across the mountains. Years later, living as a nobleman in Piemonte, he owned and operated one of the most celebrated racing stables in the country, Dormello Ogliata, home to arguably the greatest horse ever sired, Ribot. Mario had discovered the equestrian life after his return from the war and it turned out to be of enormous profit. However, in 1943 Mario and his wife, Claice Della Gherardesca, packed up and moved to an estate she had inherited on the Tuscan coast, presumably to avoid the political upheaval during the armistice of that year. During this time, Mario devoted himself to revitalizing the agricultural portion of the property and the dream he had in Pisa years ago began to slowly materialize.