Today – Sassiccaia, the story of the best Italian wine
A fairytale estate in an area that was not famous for great wines, a man determined to make his dreams come true and two ardent passions turned into very successful projects.
Sassiccaia
These are the elements that led to the birth of Sassicaia wine, one of the best wines in the world, that celebrated – in 2018 – 50 years from its first mass production. Recently, Sassicaia has been elected the best wine of the year by the international jury of Biwa – Best Italian Wine Awards.
Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, marquis of Piedmontese origin and Roman mother, descendant of the Chigi. A man with a great passion for horses and for French wines, who managed to realize his dreams with determination and dedication.
Returning from the Great War, the young Marquis enrolled in the Faculty of Agriculture of Pisa and never stopped studying and researching the world of wine. His dream was to make a Tuscan wine that recalled the best Bordeaux bottles. A Bordeaux from the Maremma. Something that was unthinkable before.
In 1930, in Bolgheri (a hamlet of Castagneto Carducci), Mario Incisa della Rocchetta married Clarice della Gherardesca, heir to the famous patrician family: his bride brought him the dowry of San Guido, now consecrated to the myth for all wine lovers.
In addition to grapes, the Marquis of Rocchetta also imported the French methodology. To make the first Cabernet vineyard in full Mediterranean scrub special, he focused on drastic pruning in the vineyard for a lower yield and on aging in barriques in the cellar.
Every year the Marquis put a few crates to age in the cellar of Castiglioncello and he soon realized that his wine considerably improved as it aged.
Thus, he began to delineate a great difference among the wines produced in that period in Tuscany, but not only: his habit is to already drink it at the end of the following winter: in this case, instead, a product is born that improved as time goes on.
For this reason, the Sassicaia wine is, therefore, configured as a sort of vine of nobility, of those who can afford the luxury of waiting until it is ready. The exact opposite of who makes wine to sell and keep it.
Ten years after the beginning of this adventure, Mario Incisa della Rocchetta expanded the vineyard and he did it in a farm on the estate that morphologically reminds him of Graves, in his beloved Bordeaux: a stony ground. In that moment, the name of this precious name was chosen. A appellation that will always remember the visionary spirit of its inventor. Sun exposure and sea breezes did the rest.
The first historic bottles of Sassicaia wine arrived in 1944, but they were exclusively reserved for family use only. For the first commercialization, it was necessary to wait until 1968. And in 2018, as mentioned, the 2015 Sassicaia vintage was elected the best wine of the year.
Sassiccaia is a feature post – you might also like my post on beautiful bellini recipes
