Sassicaia – vertical of a veteran Tuscan aristocrat

As anyone who keeps up with goings-on in Italy via wine news here knows, the Maremma is currently a hotbed of vinous activity with potential and actual vineyard land changing hands at a dizzying rate. It seems particularly appropriate therefore to look in detail at the very first fine wine from there.

Sassicaia was initially a ground-breaking Cabernet made initially in the 1940s for family consumption by Marchese Mario Incisa della Rochetta on the estate of his wife (a member of the Antinori clan) near the village of Bolgheri on the Tuscan coast. From the late 1960s it was sold...