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- Sassicaia 2016, Tenuta San Guido
Flagship wine of Tenuta San Guido. This limpid wine has a hauntingly beautiful aromatic quality of lilies, violet, cassis and cherry.
In the mouth is pleasant with bright acidity and youthful red berries. Despite we are dealing with a delicate vintage, it shows great length and precision.
Variety: Cabernet Sauvignon 85%, Cabernet Franc 15%
Average vine age: Between 3.600 to 5.500 vine stocks/ha for vineyards < 20 years old and 6.200 vine stocks/ha for vineyards > 20 years old.
Harvest: The manual harvest started with the Cabernet Franc grapes in mid-September, followed by Cabernet Sauvignon at the end of September and the Castiglioncello di Bolgheri vines at the end of October. Berries were healthy, good veraison, low sugar and good acidity.
Wine making: A very gentle crushing and de-stemming of the grapes was followed by fermentation in temperature controlled stainless steel vats (at 30°-31°C and only using natural yeasts). The maceration on the skins was a little longer than usual due to the vintage characteristics and lasted 11 to 15 days for both Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon with frequent pumpovers of the musts and délestages. The secondary fermentation (Malolactic fermentation) finished towards the end of November.
Price | nad 30 € |
---|---|
Country | Italy |
Stile of Wine | Rich red |
Grape varieties | 85% Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc 15% |
Serving temperature | 16 - 18°C |
Contents | 0,75 l |
Wine color | Red |
Wine enthusiast | 98/100 |
Alcohol level | 13,00 % |
Producer | Tenuta San Guido |
Wine spectator | 97/100 |
James Sucling | 97/100 |
Paring with food | Duck Breast, Lamb, Red Meat, Grilled Meat |
Year | 2016 |
Region | Tuscany |
Robert Parker | 100/100 |
Level of sugar | Dry |
Grape variety | Cabernet Sauvignon |
Tenuta San Guido
In the 1920s the Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta dreamt of creating a ‘thoroughbred’ wine and for him, as for all the aristocracy of the time, the ideal was Bordeaux. This is how he described it in a letter to the esteemed wine critic, Luigi Veronelli dated 11 June 1974:
“…the origins of my experiment date back to the years between 1921 and 1925 when, as a student in Pisa and often a guest of the Salviati Dukes in Migliarino, I drank a wine produced from one of their vineyards…which had the same unmistakable “bouquet” as an aged Bordeaux….”
In the 1940s, having settled with his wife Clarice on the Tenuta San Guido on the Tyrrhenian coast, he experimented with several French grape varieties (whose cuttings he had recovered from the estate of the Dukes Salviati in Migliarino) and concluded that the Cabernet had "the bouquet I was looking for."
A wine made mainly from Cabernet Sauvignon was a fundamental change to the Tuscan and Piedmont tradition of Sangiovese and Nebbiolo, respectively. The innovative decision to plant this variety at Tenuta San Guido was partly due to the similarity Mario Incisa had noted between Tuscan terrain and that of Graves in Bordeaux.
‘Graves’, or ‘gravel’ in French refers to the rocky terrain which distinguishes the Bordeaux area; similarly, the gravely vineyard sites in Tuscany impart the same characteristics on Sassicaia, "stony ground", as its cherished French brother.
The Marchese's first vintages were not warmly received. Critics accustomed to light, local wines were not encouraging; it was not taken into consideration that wines made from the more complex Cabernet Sauvignon grape would need more time to mature and develop.
And thus from 1948 to 1967, Sassicaia remained a strictly private affair, only to be consumed at Tenuta San Guido.
Each year, a few cases were stored to age in the Castiglioncello di Bolgheri cellar. The Marchese soon realized that by ageing the wine it improved considerably.
Friends and relatives now urged Mario Incisa to experiment further with his project and perfect his revolutionary winemaking style. It was not until 1968 that Sassicaia was first commercially released – the welcome was worthy of a Bordeaux Premier Cru.
Over the next few years, the cellar was moved to a temperature controlled location, steel fermentation vats replaced wooden vats, and French barriques were introduced to the aging process.
