Safeguarding Sassicaia: Priscilla Incisa della Rocchetta on ‘preservation’ at Tenuta San Guido

The Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, Sassicaia’s creator and Priscilla’s grandfather, was a far-sighted individual. He went against all orthodoxy in his choice of terroir and grape varieties (Bolgheri in the 1940s was not considered viable vineland); he turned part of the 2,500ha San Guido estate into a nature reserve; he set up a nursery for the children of the workers (Priscilla’s cousin Albiera Antinori remembers it as a toddler). Only 120ha of Tenuta San Guido are vineyard. The rest is nature reserve, forest and 10,000 olive trees.

The Marchese’s pioneering instincts took many forms but he was perhaps most radical in his focus on the vineyard and the soil. In 1970, he published a book called La Terra è Viva. ‘It talks about the fact that the ground is alive, so you have to respect the earth. When you do agriculture, you have to do it with a certain conscience, so that it gives back the best food possible, if you treat it well. If you try to exploit it, it will shut down,’ Priscilla Incisa della Rochetta says.

This is viticultural orthodoxy now but in the late 1960s it was almost eccentric – winemakers then tended to be laboratory-bound; never mind getting involved in the digging of soil pits, they didn’t often venture into the vineyards. I wonder how much of the pioneering instinct of her grandfather has been passed down to her. Does she have the urge to shake things up at Tenuta San Guido, make some changes to the nearly 60-year-old brand?

She smiles at that. She and her cousins talk a lot about how they should deal with this ‘huge legacy’, she says. ‘For the time being, we are more focused on making sure things continue to run the way they have, to concentrate on nature preservation. After all, it’s not as if we’re inheriting a shoe factory. We want to keep the place as good as possible for the next generation.’

She does vouchsafe that the new planting programme includes a hectare of Cabernet. ‘It’s more in the hills and it’s north-facing.’ (She delivers this information as if to say, ‘there’s an example of radical for you’).

Above all, I get the strong impression of a holistic enterprise – as with other famous old estates, the mantra is everything matters, all of the time. Tenuta San Guido is run by a management committee with oversight from the five cousins – Priscilla is the youngest and the only woman.

While they look forward, they are acutely conscious of the past and how it can inform the present. There’s the Marchese’s book and there are also the extensive notes of Giacomo Tachis, the renowned oenologist who began working with Sassicaia in 1970. ‘We have an archive of his notes from every vintage and this is very helpful,’ Priscilla says.

Then there is local knowledge, the hundreds of workers whose parents and grandparents were at the estate – ‘some of them are already in the third, even fourth generation, working for the family from long before the wine was even around.’ Those who work with the horses – San Guido has an equine arm that has bred some very famous racehorses – or the olives contribute to Sassicaia simply by being part of the grand endeavour.

Change is incremental, the minute adjustments of a finely tuned machine. Two other wines, Guidalberto (Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot) and the Sangiovese-Cabernet Le Difese (at around £30, it’s the entry-level cuvée) were introduced in 2000 and 2002. That was the last big innovation at Tenuta San Guido.

Sassicaia’s blend, made official by the creation of the Sassicaia Bolgheri DOC in 1994 (the only single vineyard in Italy to have its own appellation) has to remain at a minimum 80% Cabernet Sauvignon with Cabernet Franc. The 2022 is 88% Sauvignon. Some years, Incisa della Rocchetta says, Cabernet Franc can be tricky, difficult to ripen ‘either because it’s too warm or too cold.’

The oak regime may be a month or two shorter – 22 months for the 2022 as opposed to the usual 25; maceration time is reduced on warmer vintages. The high vineyards, especially Castiglioncello, are protected from rising temperatures by altitude. Castiglioncello is surrounded by deep forest, which also mitigates heat.

The warming and wetter weather is taken into account. The 2022 was kept and sorted in a new air-conditioned facility that meant the grapes remained cool. ‘How do you keep the alcohol down?’ asked one audience member at the tasting – the alcohol levels are almost never above 14%. The 2022 is 13.5%. ‘We pick earlier, we cool the grapes and we have a slightly shorter maceration,’ Incisa della Rocchetta says.

The quality of Sassicaia is its timelessness: you feel this is a wine that might have come from any age. The 2022 is reserved on the nose (it hasn’t been bottled long), robust, fresh, finely textured and beautifully structured. The acidity that sharpens the palate bespeaks a long life. It is, as the critic Walter Speller said, ‘a proper, complex wine.’ Complex, that is, without fancy effects, not a trace of oak sweetness from its long ageing in barrique, no creamy top notes. It’s an old-fashioned wine, analogue, like a polished wooden-cased valve radio that has a lovely rich sound.

Sassicaia is, by any reckoning, a great wine. Leaving aside the awards and accolades, the 100-point scores, the regular polls voting it the world’s best, the Wine of the Year or the Century, speak privately to any critic and they will agree it stands alone in Tuscany.

No wonder Incisa della Rocchetta projects such calm. What ambitions do they have at Tenuta San Guido? Any desire to open up new territories? After all, the ‘new’ cuvées were introduced almost a quarter-century ago. I murmur something about Sicily, as everybody seems to want to be there.

That smile again. ‘Sicily? Not for the moment, no. Maybe we should think about it as a next project.’