Sassicaia: The Thoroughbred of Italian Wines

[Wandering Eyes]

Just as the great Ribot was a revolutionary of his industry both on the racetrack and at stud, Sassicaia, Italy’s most famous wine, is a pioneer of its trade. Ribot and Sassicaia can be mentioned in the same breath not only because they are both great Italian exports, but because they were nurtured and developed on the same land, and by the same family, in the Bolgheri region of Tuscany.

The Incisa della Rocchetta family has been producing wine and racehorses in perfect harmony on its Tuscan estate, Tenuta San Guido, since the 1940s. The Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta had long had a love of horses-indeed, that was a common thread he shared with his wife Clarice della Gherardesca, whom he married in 1930-and he was a friend and business partner of Federico Tesio, who bred Ribot and trained him on the Tenuta San Guido property adjacent to what would become the Sassicaia vineyard. The Marchese was a heavy investor in Tesio’s Thoroughbreds and, after Tesio’s death in 1954, he raced Ribot with Tesio’s wife, Lydia.

While Ribot was establishing himself as one of racing’s all-time greats and soon after shaping the breed as the sire of the likes of Tom Rolfe, Graustark, and His Majesty, the origins for Sassicaia were being laid within shouting distance of the very ground upon which Ribot himself had tread.

In addition to his love for horses, the Marchese had a great passion for wine, dating back to his days as an agronomy student at the University of Pisa. The family that hosted the young Incisa della Rocchetta in those days introduced him to wines from the Bordeaux region of France, and the Marchese became curious about how these wines were cultivated. Benedetta Marchetto, public relations and hospitality manager at Tenuta San Guido, explained, “He was drinking the best Bordeaux and it was easy for him to be in love with it. He started to ask himself, ‘Is it a matter of [grape] varieties, or is it a matter of what we now called terroir?'”

The Marchese continued to study and ponder viticulture, but it wasn’t until he and Clarice relocated their family to Bolgheri in the 1940s to live on the property Clarice had inherited that he began to put his knowledge into practice.

To read the rest of Kelsey Riley’s story on Sassicaia’s wines, and Chris McGrath’s piece on the Thoroughbred operation, visit the September TDN Weekend.

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