Our Provenance Guarantee
Purchase with confidence. All of our wines come from well verified sources. Every bottle is thoroughly inspected for authenticity and signs of poor storage. Accepted bottles are held in our climate-controlled cellar until they reach your doorstep. We have no storefront and no walk-in traffic, so nothing is moved or handled between inspection and shipping.
The bottle you see photographed is the bottle you receive (or fundamentally identical when multiple bottles are listed), and we guarantee it arrives in the condition shown. If it doesn’t, we want to hear from you.
Ratings & Tasting Notes:
96 points — Decanter (Jane Anson), October 2016
The nose is practically humming, hovering close to perfection, the burnished Tuscan sun on full display — the most perfect level of ripeness, warmth, beauty and juiciness, with drinkability the defining quality. The tannins still bite, their teeth on display but exerting a languorous hold, “nothing fierce or menacing at this point.” Roasted wild strawberries grilled over vine cuttings, and elongated tannins with nothing to prove.
95 points — TerroirSense
Deep red-ruby with bricking at the rim. Very ripe aromas and flavours of cassis, dark plum jam, balsamic oils, cocoa and eucalyptus, alongside very strong soil tones and autumnal woodsy notes.
93 points — Wine Advocate (Monica Larner), April 2017
A beautiful wine that has passed the test of time with flying colours. A thrilling expression opening to succulent darkness and deep layers of ripe fruit opulence, with dried blackberry, plum and blackcurrant keeping the fruit profile high. Background notes of cumin, exotic spice and cured tobacco add power and weight, while lighter tones of balsam herb and crushed mineral are important to the wine’s elegance. Structured and richly textured in the mouth, balanced by its acidity. Larner noted that Parker’s original 1994 prediction — that the wine would last through the first decade of this century — could safely be extended further still.
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, because he wanted a claret of his own. For a quarter of a century the results were drunk only by his family and friends. The first commercial release, the 1968, appeared in 1971 under the guidance of oenologist Giacomo Tachis and the counsel of his cousin Piero Antinori, and it arrived as a scandal: a Cabernet from the Tuscan coast, 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, the only single-estate appellation in Italy.
1990 was a great year across Italy, warm and generous, and it gave Sassicaia unusual opulence for an estate built on restraint. Critics returning decades later have been struck by how completely it has held. Expect deep red-ruby with bricking at the rim, and a nose of dried blackberry, plum and blackcurrant with cassis and dark plum jam beneath, layered with cumin, exotic spice, cured tobacco, cocoa, eucalyptus and balsamic oils over strong soil tones. The palate is structured and richly textured but carried by its acidity, the tannins present yet unhurried. Parker predicted in 1994 that it would last through the first decade of this century; it has comfortably outlived that. Drinking beautifully now.
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.
