Tenuta San Guido

Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta (1899-1983) was born in Rome to a Piedmontese family and studied agriculture in Pisa, where he developed a lasting interest in agronomy. He moved to the Maremma in the early 1940s, after marrying Countess Clarice della Gherardesca in 1930; Clarice descended from one of Tuscany's oldest families, the family of Count Ugolino mentioned by Dante in The Divine Comedy, and her dowry brought the 2,500-hectare Tenuta San Guido estate in Bolgheri into the marriage. Mario recognised a similarity between Bolgheri's gravelly, clay-mixed soil and Bordeaux's Graves region, and in 1944 planted the estate's first Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard, just over one hectare at roughly 400 metres above sea level near Castiglioncello di Bolgheri, using grafts from the Dukes Salviati of Migliarino near Pisa. That first planting also included some Cabernet Franc, Canaiolo, Ciliegiolo and white grapes; mass selection toward exclusively Cabernet Sauvignon took place between 1960 and 1968. Sassicaia, named for the stony ground and pebbles of the vineyard, remained a strictly private wine reserved for family and friends from 1945 to 1967. The 1968 vintage was the first released commercially, reaching the market in 1971.

• Mario Incisa called the birth of Sassicaia a "simple vague experiment"; the estate's own site credits the project with "paving a new path in the history of Italian oenology."
• The estate's own site attributes Mario Incisa's introduction to oenologist Giacomo Tachis to "the Incisa family's kinship with the Antinori family, on the side of the Della Gherardesca." Wine Spectator separately identifies Piero Antinori as Mario's nephew, who "was enlisted to make Sassicaia known to the world" ahead of the 1968 commercial debut. Decanter gives a more specific account: that in the mid-1960s Mario offered Piero the distribution of Sassicaia and that Antinori "lent" his own consultant winemaker, Tachis, to Mario, with Decanter further stating the estate later "took back control of Sassicaia's marketing and sales from Antinori" once Nicolò Incisa was running the company.
• Wine critic Luigi Veronelli's 1974 review in Panorama: "Well dressed and brilliant, a dense and demure bouquet, of an uncommon sullen elegance …with a consistent backbone in a well-structured fabric."

Sassicaia's first major public recognition came in 1978, when its 1972 vintage was awarded first place among 33 wines from around the world at a blind tasting of Cabernet-based wines organised in London by Hugh Johnson for Decanter magazine (a later Decanter retrospective on the 1985 vintage describes the same 1978 tasting but names the 1975 vintage as the winner; see conflicts.json). Robert Parker awarded the 1985 vintage 100 points, a score Parker reportedly said he often mistook for the 1986 Mouton Rothschild; a Decanter retrospective calls Sassicaia "the grandfather" of the wines that became known as SuperTuscans. Wine Advocate critic Monica Larner gave the 2016 vintage a second 100-point score, saying "The 2016 Sassicaia stands tall next to the epic 1985 vintage that set the ultimate benchmark for vino Italiano." The estate's own site states the 2021 vintage also received a 100-point score, attributed on-site simply to "Parker" (i.e., Wine Advocate). The 2015 vintage, rated 97 points by Wine Spectator critic Bruce Sanderson, was named Wine Spectator's Wine of the Year for 2018, fifty years after Sassicaia's first commercial vintage. Bolgheri Sassicaia was first recognised as a subzone of Bolgheri DOC and became its own fully independent DOC in December 2013; the estate's own site calls Sassicaia the first Italian wine produced by a single estate to have a denomination of origin exclusively reserved for it, an honour it says is matched only by a handful of iconic wines in France, and the Bolgheri DOC consortium confirms Tenuta San Guido is the only winery entitled to produce under the Bolgheri Sassicaia DOC.

• Serena Sutcliffe MW and David Peppercorn MW: "We believe that Sassicaia is one of the greatest wine creations of the century. It also happens to be simply wonderful to drink."
• Decanter's Jane Anson also scored the 1985 vintage 100 points at a later vertical tasting, saying "Get hold of this wine if you possibly can."
• On its UK release in February 2019, the 2016 vintage was priced at £1,270 ($1,635) per case of 12; Wine Advocate's Monica Larner had rated the preceding 2015 vintage 97 points in bottle.

Tenuta San Guido produces three wines. Sassicaia, the flagship, is typically 85 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 15 percent Cabernet Franc per Wine Spectator and Decanter (the estate's own site does not state an exact percentage), grown in estate-owned plots at Castiglioncello, Aia Nuova, Cerreta, Sassicaia di Sopra and San Martino. Guidalberto, first released with the 2000 vintage after more than twenty years of experimentation, blends Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot; the estate names it for Guidalberto della Gherardesca, an early-1800s agricultural pioneer who built the area's first mills and churches, as well as the Viale dei Cipressi, the estate's cypress avenue. Le Difese, first released with the 2002 vintage, blends Sangiovese with Cabernet Sauvignon and, per the estate's own site, also includes selected lots from Sassicaia and Guidalberto; its name comes from the gold wild-boar tusks depicted on its label. Wine Spectator additionally reports that Guidalberto is roughly 60 percent Cabernet Sauvignon (including some young Sassicaia vines) and Merlot, with 80 percent of the fruit from a leased vineyard near the Sassicaia vineyard, and that Le Difese is about 40 percent Sangiovese with the remainder Cabernet Sauvignon.

• Carlo Paoli, Head of Winemaking, on Guidalberto: "It offers full, satisfying drinkability. Its complexity and structure give it remarkable potential for long-term ageing and refinement."
• Carlo Paoli, Head of Winemaking, on Le Difese: "A soft and youthful wine that also includes selected lots from Sassicaia and Guidalberto. Its approachable style and delicate structure make it extremely enjoyable even in the early months of bottle ageing."
• The oenology team is led by Carlo Paoli and includes Alessio Bartolomei and Matilde Gentili; Nicola Politi heads agronomy.

Tenuta San Guido covers 2,500 hectares in the Bolgheri area of the Tuscan Maremma, stretching roughly 13 kilometres from the hills to the sea; the estate's own site states that vineyards account for only about 5 percent of the total property. The estate's dedicated Sassicaia page gives the Sassicaia vineyard's altitude range as 100 to 360 metres above sea level, on calcareous soils rich in marl, with stones, pebbles and areas of partial clay; a separate page on the same site instead divides the Sassicaia growing area into a foothill zone around 80 metres and a hillside zone between 250 and 400 metres (see conflicts.json for this internal inconsistency). More broadly, the estate's soils sit between 60 and 400 metres with a west/south-west exposure and a strong limestone presence in areas of alberese and gabbro. The climate is shaped by hills running from Bibbona to Castagneto, which shelter the vineyards from north-easterly winds, while summer sea breezes cool the corridor. Vines are trained on a low spurred cordon system with sparse planting density; fertilisation is exclusively organic and harvesting is done by hand.

• Wine Spectator: Sassicaia is fermented in stainless steel, then aged in French oak casks, one-third new, for 24 months; average annual production, as reported in 2018, was 10,000 cases.
• A Decanter profile of the 1985 vintage put the Sassicaia vineyard at three named parcels that year (Castiglioncello, 1.5 hectares at 340m; Sassicaia di Sotto, 13 hectares at 80m; Aianova, 16 hectares), with about 70 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 30 percent Cabernet Franc in that vintage's blend; the estate's current site instead names five plots (Castiglioncello, Aia Nuova, Cerreta, Sassicaia di Sopra and San Martino), consistent with the vineyard holdings having grown since 1985.
• In the mid-1970s the estate located its Sassicaia production and ageing winery at the entrance of the Viale dei Cipressi (Cypress Avenue), replacing the original cellar at the Castiglioncello castle.

Nicolò Incisa della Rocchetta, Mario's son, was born in Rome in 1936, moved to Bolgheri in 1942, began studies at the Le Rosey school in Switzerland in 1948, and graduated from the University of Geneva in 1959 with a Bachelor of Science in Economics; he is today the estate's Honorary President (a company-history passage elsewhere on the same site instead calls him Honorary Chairman; see conflicts.json). Alessandro Berlingieri has been Tenuta San Guido's CEO since 2018 and its Chairman since 2022. Carlo Paoli, General Manager and Head of Production since 2009, became Chief Executive Officer of Tenuta San Guido in 2025. The family's third generation as wine producers is represented by five cousins; Priscilla Incisa, Nicolò's daughter, is responsible for external relations, per the estate's own site. Wine Spectator, reporting in 2018, described Priscilla as the family member who "now manages the estate"; see conflicts.json for this apparent difference between the 2018 press account and the estate's current site.

• Alessandro Berlingieri, CEO since 2018 and Chairman since 2022: "Tenuta San Guido is a farming estate that looks to the future while remaining rooted in its traditions—traditions founded on research, observation, and the development of Nature’s finest expressions, with respect for the land, the animals, and the people who inhabit and work it."
• Carlo Paoli, General Manager and Head of Production since 2009, CEO since 2025: "Each day, we observe the evolution of the land and its fruits, drawing on memory and experience to find new solutions that enhance their value."
• Priscilla Incisa, on the estate: "Tenuta San Guido for me is a cultural and natural heritage, to be preserved and handed down to future generations."

Primary sources (producer's own site, fetched as raw page text via curl and tag-stripping, not a summarizing tool): https://www.tenutasanguido.com/en/history, .../en/wines, .../en/sassicaia-en, .../en/guidalberto-en, .../en/le-difese-en, .../en/razza-dormello-olgiata-en, .../en/wildlife-refuge, .../en/genius-loci-en. Secondary sources (also fetched as raw page text): the Bolgheri DOC consortium's producer page for Tenuta San Guido; Decanter, "The story of Sassicaia: How a controversial experiment became a legend"; Wine Spectator's 2018 Top 100 Wine of the Year entry for the 2015 Sassicaia; Robert Parker Wine Advocate's Wine Journal article on the UK release of the 2016 Sassicaia (Liv-ex, 20 Feb 2019); Decanter's "Wine Legend: Tenuta San Guido, Sassicaia 1985." Last verified 2026-09-09. Where the producer's site and a secondary source disagree, the producer's site governs; see conflicts.json for seven logged discrepancies: the 1972-vs-1975 winning vintage at the 1978 Decanter tasting, the Sassicaia vineyard altitude and plot-name discrepancies, Nicolò Incisa's Honorary President/Honorary Chairman titles, Priscilla Incisa's role as described in 2018 versus today, the 1943-vs-1944 planting-date and Chateau-Lafite-vs-Migliarino origin accounts, an 85/15-vs-70/30 Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc split within one Decanter article, and how long Giacomo Tachis remained the estate's consulting oenologist (the site's four-decade-plus framing versus Decanter's explicit "until 2010"). The affiliation between the Incisa family and the Antinori family in Sassicaia's early distribution history is flagged in escalations.json per the project's AFFILIATION-FRAMING rule and has not been finally resolved pending review.