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 strong 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 saw a similarity between Bolgheri's gravelly, stony soil mixed with clay and the Graves region of Bordeaux, and in 1944 he planted the estate's first Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard: just over one hectare at roughly 400 metres above sea level near Castiglioncello di Bolgheri, from grafts supplied by the Dukes Salviati of Migliarino near Pisa. That first planting also included Cabernet Franc, Canaiolo, Ciliegiolo and white grapes; mass selection toward Cabernet Sauvignon alone took place between 1960 and 1968. Sassicaia, named for the stones and pebbles of its vineyard ground, remained a strictly private wine for family and friends from 1945 to 1967. The 1968 vintage was the first released commercially, reaching the market in 1971.

• Mario Incisa later called the birth of Sassicaia a "simple vague experiment"; the experiment changed the fate of Bolgheri and set a new path in the history of Italian oenology.
• Mario Incisa met the young oenologist Giacomo Tachis through the Incisa family's kinship with the Antinori family, on the side of the Della Gherardesca. In the mid-1960s Mario offered the distribution of Sassicaia to his nephew Piero Antinori, who was enlisted to make the wine known to the world. Decanter adds that Antinori lent Tachis, his own consultant winemaker, to Mario, and that the estate later took back control of Sassicaia's marketing and sales from Antinori, by which time Nicolò Incisa was running it.
• 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."

International recognition came in 1978, when the 1972 vintage took 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 names the 1975 vintage as the winner of the same tasting; see conflicts.json). Robert Parker awarded the 1985 vintage 100 points, saying he often mistook it for the 1986 Mouton Rothschild, and Decanter calls Sassicaia "the grandfather" of the wines that became known as SuperTuscans. Wine Advocate critic Monica Larner gave the 2016 vintage 100 points: "The 2016 Sassicaia stands tall next to the epic 1985 vintage that set the ultimate benchmark for vino Italiano." The 2021 vintage also received a perfect 100-point score from Parker. 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. Tenuta San Guido is the only winery entitled to produce under the Bolgheri Sassicaia DOC, which makes Sassicaia the first Italian wine from a single estate with a denomination of origin reserved exclusively for it, an honour the estate describes as matched only by a handful of iconic wines in France.

• 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: "Get hold of this wine if you possibly can."
• The 2016 vintage was released in the UK in February 2019 at £1,270 ($1,635) per case of 12. 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, 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. It is named for Guidalberto della Gherardesca, an ancestor who led the agricultural transformation of Bolgheri and in the early decades of the 1800s 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 also includes selected lots from Sassicaia and Guidalberto; its name comes from the wild-boar tusks shown in gold on its label. In 2018 Guidalberto was about 60 percent Cabernet Sauvignon (including some young Sassicaia vines) with the rest Merlot, 80 percent of its fruit coming from a leased vineyard near the Sassicaia vineyard, and Le Difese was 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 over 13 kilometres from the hills to the sea; vineyards make up only about 5 percent of the property. The Sassicaia vineyards lie between 100 and 360 metres above sea level, on calcareous soils rich in marl, with stones, pebbles and areas of partial clay. The estate's wines overview page instead divides the Sassicaia growing area into a foothill zone at about 80 metres and a hillside zone between 250 and 400 metres (see conflicts.json). Across the estate, the partly clay soils sit between 60 and 400 metres with a west/south-west exposure and a strong limestone presence in areas of alberese and gabbro. Hills running from Bibbona to Castagneto shelter the vineyards from north-easterly winds, and summer sea breezes cool the corridor. Vines are trained on a low spurred cordon at sparse planting density; fertilisation is exclusively organic and harvesting is done by hand.

• Sassicaia is fermented in stainless steel, then aged for 24 months in French oak casks, one-third new; average annual production in 2018 was 10,000 cases.
• In 1985 the Sassicaia vineyard comprised three parcels (Castiglioncello, 1.5 hectares at 340m; Sassicaia di Sotto, 13 hectares at 80m; Aianova, 16 hectares), with about 70 percent of the vines Cabernet Sauvignon and the remainder Cabernet Franc. The estate now grows Sassicaia in five plots: Castiglioncello, Aia Nuova, Cerreta, Sassicaia di Sopra and San Martino.
• In the mid-1970s the estate moved Sassicaia's production and ageing winery to the entrance of the Viale dei Cipressi (Cypress Avenue), replacing the original cellar at Castiglioncello di Bolgheri.

Nicolò Incisa della Rocchetta, Mario's son, was born in Rome in 1936, moved to Bolgheri in 1942, began his studies at Le Rosey in Switzerland in 1948 and graduated from the University of Geneva in 1959 with a Bachelor of Science in Economics. He is the estate's Honorary President (Honorary Chairman in another passage of the company history; 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 in 2025. Five cousins represent the family's third generation as wine producers; Priscilla Incisa, Nicolò's daughter, is responsible for external relations. In 2018 Wine Spectator described Priscilla as the family member who "now manages the estate" (see conflicts.json).

• 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 2026-10-12. 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.