Italy · Tuscany

Tenuta San Guido

Tenuta San Guido is the birthplace of the Super Tuscan revolution and home to Sassicaia, one of Italy's most celebrated and collectible wines. The Incisa della Rocchetta family planted Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc on the rocky, well-drained soils of Bolgheri in the early 1940s, inspired by the great châteaux of Bordeaux. The pioneering winemaker Giacomo Tachis — who later worked at Antinori — refined the wine through the 1970s, and the 1985 vintage gained international recognition when Decanter magazine named it the finest Cabernet in a blind tasting that included First Growths. Sassicaia became the world's first single-estate DOC when it received its own appellation in 1994. The estate's 90 hectares of vineyards sit on the coastal hills of Maremma, where the Mediterranean climate and stony, calcium-rich soils produce a wine of remarkable structure and aromatic complexity. The style is classic rather than showy: cedar, tobacco, blackcurrant, Mediterranean herbs, and a distinctive saline mineral note that reflects the proximity to the sea. At auction, Sassicaia — particularly the 1985 and the modern classics such as 2015 and 2016 — commands prices that rival Bordeaux's greatest estates and reflect its singular importance in Italian wine history.