Sassicaia is one of the most famous wines on the planet thanks to the vision and foresight of the Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta who dreamt of creating an Italian wine to rival the finest Bordeauxs. In the 1940s he was living at the Tenuta San Guido estate which his wife had inherited close to Tuscany’s Tyrrhenian coast when he began to experiment with vine cuttings of French grape varieties. He soon realised that Cabernet Sauvignon was the answer to his quest due to the similarity between the terroir at Tenuta San Guido and that in Bordeaux.
The Marchese’s initial wines were not received well by Italy’s wine critics and it was only in 1968 that the first commercial vintage of Sassicaia was released. This new wine was soon hailed as a “Super Tuscan”, becoming the first wine to claim this title since it was made with international rather than indigenous Italian grape varieties. Today the estate is run by Mario’s son, Nicoló, and Sassicaia is Tenuta San Guido’s flagship wine, regularly receiving perfect 100 point scores from Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate.
Composed of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, Sassicaia boasts a remarkably complex flavour profile with plenty of rich dark fruit, hints of bitter herbs and mint, and notes of cigar box spice and woodsmoke from the ageing in French oak barrels. This is a wine which can be cellared for decades or enjoyed now alongside hearty red meat dishes like venison, beef stews or coq au vin.