Ratings & Tasting Notes:

94 points — James Suckling, Wine Spectator
Dark ruby red. Blackberry, with lots of fresh herb and meat character. Full-bodied, with velvety tannins and loads of fresh fruit and tarragon, closing on dill. Textbook Sassicaia that grows in the mouth, tasted in a 1997 Italian blind retrospective. Best after 2009. 12,500 cases made.

92 points — Decanter
The nose has softened and closed in just a touch; seen as exceptional on release, it isn’t delivering as effortlessly today as some neighbouring vintages. Silkily textured black fruits on the attack, with charm in spades — ready and willing to hold a conversation if given time. After a few minutes in the glass comes the aroma of damp roses at the close of day, together with gentle smoky cedar edges and the salty tang of black olive tapenade. It showcases the welcoming aspect of Sassicaia that has won it so many devoted fans across five decades.

Vinous — no score published
The 1997 has aged exceptionally well. Creamy, layered and enveloping, and so alluring today. The warm, dry year — which would be considered moderate by today’s standards — yielded a Sassicaia of notable depth, soft curves and tremendous sensuality. A warm, dry winter and spring led to early budbreak before temperatures cooled and ripening halted, probably a blessing in disguise, since it let the vines rest before warm, dry conditions returned and persisted through harvest. Yields were low.

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. At a Decanter tasting in London in 1978 the 1972 beat all thirty-three other Cabernets from France and California. In 1994 the estate was granted DOC Bolgheri Sassicaia, the only appellation in Italy belonging to a single property.

The estate’s own record of 1997 is unusually direct: the harvest was poorer than expected, but it was an exceptional year, arguably better than 1990. A dry, mild end to winter brought budbreak roughly ten days early, then April cold halted growth. What followed was warm and sunny through September and right through the picking, giving small quantities of very healthy fruit with high sugar concentration. Nearly thirty years on, expect dark ruby moving to an orange-brown rim, with blackberry, dried red fruit, fresh herb and a savoury meaty note, alongside cocoa, leather, smoky cedar and black olive. Full-bodied and velvety, the tannins fully resolved, with dill and tarragon on a long finish. Give it two hours in a decanter.

Bottle Size:

375mL – Half Bottle

Storage History:

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

Condition:

Please note: The bottle shown is the exact bottle being sold.

Outstanding condition.