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At the point where the Via Aurelia meets the Viale di Bolgheri is a circle of cypresses surrounding the obelisk that Giuseppe della Gherardesca erected for Nobel prize winner Giosuč Carducci.
Beyond the obelisk is the church of San Guido, built by Simone Maria della Gherardesca at the beginning of the 18th Century, that lends its name to the Sassicaia estate. The Viale di Bolgheri is lined with 200 years-old cypresses, and runs for 5 km through the heart of the Tenuta San Guido estate to the castle and village center of Bolgheri. Tenuta San Guido is an estate of about 2500 hectares, whose most important feature is its diversity of purpose.
Less than one fourth of its surface is devoted to winemaking, while two-thirds of the total is woodland.
One hundred and fifty hectares comprise the Dormello-Olgiata thoroughbred training center, and the remaining six hundred and fifty hectares are cultivated with cereals or olive groves, used as pasture for horses and livestock or are part of Italy's first private bird sanctuary, the Oasi of Bolgheri.
The estate rises from the sea to the hills behind the castle of Castiglioncello, located a height of 396 meters - more than one thousand feet above sea level. This altitude makes for a very striking landscape, as well as a fabulous microclimate.
A wine that had Cabernet Sauvignon as its primary component represented a radical shift from the traditional Tuscan and Piedmontese varietals of Sangiovese and Nebbiolo. No one had ever considered making a wine crafted along Bordeaux lines on Italian soil, much less in a region not yet established viticulturally. In addition to the Cabernet's satisfactory bouquet, Mario Incisa´s decision to plant this grape variety at Tenuta San Guido was influenced by the Tuscan location's similarity to Graves in Bordeaux. "Graves" means "gravel" in French, and similarly, the earth at Tenuta San Guido gave Sassicaia its name, which in the Tuscan dialect means "stony ground".
However, accustomed to the light, local wines, consumers did not respond well to the first vintages of Sassicaia. Wines made from the more complex Cabernet Sauvignon grapes take more time to mature and develop. Subsequently, from 1948 to 1960, Sassicaia was consumed only at the estate.
Each year, a small number of cases were laid down in the cellars of Castiglioncello.
The Marquis discovered that as the years went by, however, the wine greatly improved. As is often the case with wines of great pedigree, those things originally considered defects turned into virtues over time. Soon, friends and relatives were urging him to pursue his passion and to perfect his revolutionary style of winemaking.
His use of Cabernet grapes and his implementation of the barriques ageing process soon spread throughout Italy. Sassicaia was the first Italian wine to successfully establish itself abroad, and is almost universally recognized as the father of the new Italian wine family or simply the Super Tuscan Pioneer. Mario Incisa della Rocchetta's planting is now considered the birthplace of Italian Cabernet.
The new plantings, the improved methods of vinification, and the work of oenologist Giacomo Tachis, produced stunning results, and experts worldwide took notice.
Sassicaia is in fact the first, and so far only wine in Italy, that has been awarded in 1994 its own DOC, the "DOC Bolgheri Sassicaia".
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