Ratings & Tasting Notes:

97 points — Vinous
One of the huge surprises of this tasting. Still very fresh, the 1991 dances on the palate. Crushed flowers, spice, tobacco and cedar all grace the lifted, aromatic bouquet. Just as compelling on the palate, where its delicate, hauntingly beautiful personality “stops all conversation at the table,” with understated floral and savoury Cabernet notes lingering. The growing season was cool and wet in spring and variable through summer — nothing that could be considered especially remarkable. The wine, on the other hand, is unforgettable.

Decanter (Jane Anson), October 2016 — no score published
You can feel the gathering of dusk here, with the soft debris of tannins and anthocyanins as the structure softens with age. Beautiful persistency, not powerful but tenacious, with salinity and a minty character giving form and freshness to the finish even after so many years. Notes of seashell and lobster bisque, tight at first but opening up quickly.

Cult Wines International Notes:

Sassicaia is the wine that changed Italy. Mario Incisa della Rocchetta planted Cabernet Sauvignon at Bolgheri in the mid-1940s, on stony coastal ground nobody thought fit for fine wine, wanting a claret of his own. For a quarter of a century the wine was drunk only by family and friends. The first commercial release, the 1968, appeared in 1971 under oenologist Giacomo Tachis and the counsel of his cousin Piero Antinori, and it arrived as a scandal: a Tuscan coastal Cabernet sold as humble Vino da Tavola. Within a decade it had beaten the world’s great Cabernets in blind tastings and created the category the press named the Super Tuscans. Bolgheri Sassicaia became its own DOC in 1994, Italy’s only single-estate appellation.

1991 was, by the estate’s own account, a good year rather than an excellent one: a cool, drizzly spring, then a summer alternating high heat with sudden cool. What saved it was the woodland surrounding the Sassicaia vineyards, which acts as a flywheel on the microclimate. Sugars reached 21 percent by mid-September with acidity intact, and the whole crop came in on 24 September. The wine spent 23 months in barrel and was bottled unfiltered. The estate noted that the skins were not especially thick, giving tannins never abundant but unusually smooth — precisely what has let the 1991 age so gracefully. Expect a delicate, aromatic wine of crushed flowers, spice, tobacco, cedar and blackcurrant, with salinity and a minty lift on a long, tenacious finish.

Bottle Size:

750 mL

Storage History:

Always stored on its side in a climate-controlled cellar.

Condition:

Outstanding condition.

Please note: The condition of the bottle you will receive is accurately reflected by the one shown in the images.