Tenuta San Guido - Sassicaia 2022

Sassicaia needs no introduction in the world of Super Tuscans and Cabernet Sauvignon based wines. The 1968 vintage saw the debut of Sassicaia, a courageous wine that at the time, broke away from the standard way of making Tuscan Wine. The wine is named after the stony soil which it comes from, and, by its nature, is destined to go far.

Tenuta San Guido, the birthplace of Sassicaia, the original Super Tuscan, crafts wines from vineyards rooted in Bolgheri's gravelly soils, where southwest-facing slopes and maritime breezes foster ideal ripening conditions. In 2022, despite a hot and dry summer, they produced a Sassicaia marked by elegance and purity, a testament to their meticulous hand-harvesting, natural yeast fermentation, and aging in French oak. This vintage is a departure from sheer power, emphasizing freshness and longevity. It opens with an expressive nose of ripe red fruits—plum, cherry, and blackberry—intertwined with nuanced notes of menthol, dark spice, and blue florals. The palate, elegantly streamlined, delivers a harmonious blend of ripe blackberry, wild cherry, licorice, and mint, supported by a backbone of refined tannins and vibrant acidity, promising exceptional aging potential for decades to come.

"Plenty of red currant, cedar, iron and terra cotta aromas follow through to a medium to full body with graphite, sandalwood, red currants and fresh Mediterranean herbs such as thyme and rosemary. The tannins are chewy but polished in texture. This is a Sassicaia that needs three or four years of bottle age to come together and soften. A structured wine for the cellar." - 98 Points, James Suckling

"The Tenuta San Guido 2022 Bolgheri Sassicaia reveals a beautiful fruit profile with fresh blackberry, tart cherry and Mediterranean tones of blue rosemary blooms and lavender sachet. I tasted this wine several times over the course of a few months, and it has already shown a happy evolution coming into slow focus like the faint colors that emerge from a Polaroid photograph. Indeed, the bouquet appeared more closed just a short while ago. The wine's strongest suit is its elegantly streamlined mouthfeel and its contained 13.5% alcohol content. These qualities add to the silky cleanness of the mouthfeel and the accessible freshness of this vintage. I am confident that this bottle will improve with time. It requires patience." - 97 Points, Wine Advocate

"The wine is tightly coiled and concentrated. It feels almost cinched at the waist, with a fascinating tension between the weight of raspberry, blackberry and strawberry coulis fruit and the wine's verticality, as if it's trying to burst out. Lovely mid-palate sapidity is allied to fresh acidity and fine but dense tannins, making for a dark horse of a Sassicaia that isn't giving much away today but will greatly reward those who can cellar it for 12 years and more. ‘What is sure is that 2022 will need a lot of time, but will also have a long life,’ said Priscilla Incisa della Rocchetta. A hot vintage, 2022 caused the team to work in the newly completed refrigerated warehouses in San Guido, even moving the sorting table inside. Shorter macerations and 23 rather than the more typical 24 or 25 months of ageing in wood helped to maximise the freshness." - 97 Points, Decanter

Producer: Tenuta San Guido

Country: Italy

Region: Tuscany

Varietal: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc

Appellation: Bolgheri

Vintage: 2022

Size: 750ml