SASSICAIA: the Italian wine that made history

Bolgheri Sassicaia Doc, Tenuta San Guido, Castagneto Carducci

The name of this wine is today a celeb, but how many of you know its story?

The main character of this story is Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, a man with noble origins from Piedmont, who decided to move in Bolgheri (Tuscany) in the second post-war period to marry Clarice, who brought as marriage settlement 600 hectares of land and about 10 small farms. In Bolgheri the dream of Mario Incisa della Rocchetta became true.

He was very fond of horses and wines, especially French wines. So he decided to use is knowledge in vine-growing and agricolture to create a masterpiece wine: Sassicaia.

A wine born as an experiment

The "Tenuta San Guido" was born as a prestigious horse farm (the celeb horse Ribot spent a time there). Around 1940, Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, a man of a singular vision, understood the vocation of this land of Bolgheri to produce a great wine, able to compete with the rich and structured french red wine of Bordeaux. He noticed a similarity with the pebbly soil of Bolgheri, and the Graves in Bordeaux, where cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc gave great results. So he decided to make this experiment: he planted a few of cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc vines to produce an Italian wine using the Bordeaux cut.

In 1944 he bottled the first bottles of Sassicaia, used at the beginning only as the wine of the family (not commercialised). Sassicaia is born as a table wine.