Tenuta San Guido
Appellations
History
Tenuta San Guido at Bolgheri, on the Tuscan Maremma coast, is the birthplace of Sassicaia — the wine that created the 'Super Tuscan' category. From the 1940s the Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta planted Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc on the estate's stony ground, convinced the gravelly coastal terroir could rival Bordeaux; for years the wine was made only for family and friends.
The first commercial release was the 1968 vintage, put on the market in the early 1970s, and Sassicaia's international acclaim — famously topping a 1978-vintage blind tasting of Cabernets — helped upend the Tuscan hierarchy by proving that a non-DOC coastal Cabernet could be world-class. In 1994 the wine was granted its own appellation, Bolgheri Sassicaia DOC, the only single-estate DOC in Italy.
The estate, still run by the Incisa della Rocchetta family, makes Sassicaia alongside the second wine Guidalberto and the more approachable Le Difese, all from Bolgheri's gravelly vineyards.