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A Note from Sergio

A Note from Sergio

Enoteca San Guido sits across the street from the estate's winery. Originally the borgo, or village, built for the workers on the estate of the Incisa della Rocchetta, this small cluster of stone buildings holds a burnished glamor of effortless elegance. Outside, a thigh-high old wall surrounds the grounds, and the expanse of green lawn is dotted minimally with trees. An ancient cistern sits like a sentinel, and all the buildings show spots of lichen. The buildings seem almost organic, like they've been there as long as the trees and the hills and the Tuscan light, maybe longer. It's all eerily minimalist from an American point of view, a little careless, a bit worn, and utterly gorgeous.

If there's one thing that aristocrats do better than anyone, it's elegance without effort. Even if under everyone's skins all of our blood is red, the bluebloods among us have this particular aesthetic cornered--it's in their cultural DNA, if you will. The air they breathe, the clothes they wear, the houses they live in all subtly, quietly, constantly transmit this aesthetic, and those raised in it pick it up.

Elegance is engrained in the aristocratic terroir, and Tenuta San Guido, the makers of Sassicaia, epitomize it. Sassicaia is a wine that's elegant to the bone, a wine born and bred of aristocrats, and one of the finest wines ever made. In fact, it's probably not too strong to say that Sassicaia could only come from the bloodline of Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta--it was his life's great passion as a gentleman farmer, a devoted viticulturist, and a father who passed his passion, knowledge and devotion on to his sons.

Recently, I found myself in the unusual position of having to stand up for Sassicaia. It was strange for me because the people I interact with every day take Sassicaia's greatness as a fact as immutable as gravity or a heliocentric universe. However, recently a friend of mine, a person who likes wine but whose palate is still pretty young, asked me what made Sassicaia so great.

"It's one of the finest wines on the planet." I said, expecting that to end the conversation.

"Really," she said. "Why?"

I explained, patiently I hope, that Sassicaia has this incredible structure and balance, something that allows it to be enjoyable for decades. I told her that it was a wine that was at once both familiar and unknowable, a wine of kaleidoscopic complexity, and a wine that could only come from Italy. I said that it was a wine that embodied the more than the technical skills of its maker--it embodied an aesthetic ideal, and that ideal was in every vintage, every bottle and every sip.

The current buzz phrases among winemakers center on the importance of grapes and of viticulture, but this is something that the winemakers of Sassicaia have been saying for years. "Good grapes make good wine," Sebastiano Rosa, Tenuta San Guido's Director of Communication, said recently, waving his hand almost dismissively at the rows of casks. "Everything's done in the vineyards." The shining steel and glass almost seemed to disappear with his words; all I could see was the dusky purple of healthy grapes, the green of leaves, and the glint of rocky soil. I could see Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta saying the same words. It's the philosophy underlying the whole enterprise since the beginning.

Good breeding counts for a lot. You can taste it in wine made from good grapes, and when that wine is Sassicaia, the beloved progeny of Italian aristocrats, you can taste more than breeding. You can taste the practice of life lived well and lived thoughtfully, a life lived appreciating all that was given to you--and all that you have done with it. You can taste the effortlessness that comes only with a lot of real, hard work done with hands in the dirt.

This week, I'm delighted to present the 2008 Sassicaia, which I'm offering along with the exquisite 2006 and the powerhouse 2007. The '08 is, Sebastiano says, the finest vintage in forty years. It's certainly elegant, but I wouldn't expect anything less from Sassicaia, the wine that makes elegance look easy.

My Best,