Tenuta San Guido Sassicaia 2020 750ml

ITALY : TUSCANY : BOLGHERI

SUSTAINABLE : Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc

FULL-BODIED, BLACKCURRANT, CEDAR, CRUSHED STONE, IRON, OAK

A cold front at the end of March cut the crop, then a warm, settled summer pushed ripening about a week ahead of schedule. The estate compressed the entire manual harvest into roughly 22 days to stay ahead of over-ripeness, and the fruit came in healthy with sugars up and acidity intact.

Fermentation ran on native yeasts alone. The wine then spent more than 25 months in fine-grained French barriques, 45% of them new, chosen specifically to limit tannin transfer. This is the leaner, more Bordeaux-shaped side of Sassicaia, where the structure never gets ahead of the perfume.

Wine Spectator 97 pts. Wine Advocate 96 pts, with Monica Larner calling it "beautiful and compelling straight out of the gate." The tannins are silky but young, and the estate says so itself: give this one air, or give it years.

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