The story of Italy's wine revolution began, if only as the seeds of an idea, in the 1920s in the mind of a young Piemontese student, Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, then attending the University of Pisa. A frequent guest of the Salviati, Duchi of San Rossore, he was from time to time offered at their table a wine very different from the traditional wines of the region, reminiscent of the Bordeaux his grandfather purchased in barrels. He decided that were he ever to make his own wine, it would be like this.

It was not until 1940, through his marriage to the Marchesa Clarice della Gherardesca, that Mario Incisa della Rocchetta began to bring his ambition to life. The marriage, through her dowry, had brought into common ownership the immense, 7,500 acre estate of Tenuta San Guido owned for centuries by her family, in the province of Livorno on the western outskirts of Tuscany near the village of Bolgheri. The property would provide a new environment for the Marchese's extremely successful career in breeding Thoroughbred racehorses, a success immortalized in his invincible stallion Ribot, one of the greatest racehorses of the 20th century. Yet it also finally offered him the possibility of pursing the creation of a wine.

The area surrounding Bolgheri, only a few kilometers from the coast, produced common, inferior quality wines; its proximity to the salt water marshes invariably resulted in brackish, unstable wines which nearly always showed defects. The wines of the Tenuta San Guido never appeared on the owner's table. Mario Incisa preferred to procure his wines directly from the châteaux of Bordeaux, to which his tastes were most attuned. But with the advent of the second World War, purchasing wines in France became virtually impossible, even for the Marchese.

Thus in 1944, he acquired a number of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc vine cuttings from a vineyard he recalled near Pisa and planted them on a sloping hillside overlooking the San Guido estate, called Castiglioncello after the small, 11th-century castle used as a hunting lodge of the same name at the vineyard's upper edge. At an altitude of 1,150 feet above sea level and exposed to the northeast, the tiny 3.75-acre vineyard lay protected from the coastal winds by dense thickets and small trees, which also reduced yield to only 300 grams of must per vine.

His insurgent use of the Cabernet variety, which relegated the wine to "vino da tavola" status according to D.O.C. law, was compounded by the Marchese's use of small oak barrels to age the wine. The first harvest was aged in Slovenian oak casks of 225 litres, identical in size to the French "barrique," and crafted to the Marchese's specification at the Gherardesca's shipbuilding facility in Genoa. In contrast to the large oak vats used to age Chianti, which minimize the slow transfer of tannic extracts, the small barrique yielded a rapid, high extraction of oak. The result, predictably, was an initially hard, tannic wine.

The Marchese's first vintages were not warmly received. Critics accustomed to the light, local wines, consumed by the March after harvest, passed unflattering judgements such as, "You can't drink this stuff; it burns your mouth." Mario Incisa nearly abandoned his apparently unpromising project. Between 1948 and 1960, the vineyard's tiny yield of barely two hectolitres a year was either consumed only by the family or left forgotten in the cellar. The effect of those few years in the cellar on the few remaining bottles were later to make the crucial difference.

In the early 1960s, a few of the Marchese's well-versed colleagues tasted some of the older bottles. They expressed such enthusiastic praise that in 1965, Mario Incisa resumed his project, planting a second Cabernet vineyard with cuttings from the Castiglioncello vineyard. Situated 650 feet lower than Castiglioncello, this gravelly, Médoc-like parcel of 30 acres would give Mario Incisa's wine its name: Sassicaia, meaning "the place of many stones". This microclimate and a slightly more elevated second microclimate of 20 acres called Aianova began to be planted simultaneously. Both parcels, similar in soil composition and structure to the Castiglioncello parcel, differed chemically and climatically both from the original parcel and from each other in their greater exposure to the southwest maritime winds, lesser shelter from rains, and in the more robust nature of the vegetation at these lower altitudes.

Between 1965 and 1985, both vineyards were planted in successive phases to the present limit, including all three zones, of 90 acres. A more recent vineyard, called Quercioni, planted from cuttings from the Sassicaia parcel in 1989 and 1990 and sited on a stony ridge high above the winery, contributes selectively to the blend.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, important technical changes were made. The counsel of Giacomo Tachis, Tuscany's most respected oenologist, was enlisted. The cellars were moved from Rocca di Castiglioncello to an old cottage near San Guido, which had been temperature- controlled for its former use as storage for flower bulbs. The old wood fermentation vats were replaced by stainless steel tanks. The Marchese also experimented with casks: he found that, beyond aging in 225-litre barriques, superior results were obtained by aging in new oak, a practice recommended by his French colleagues which carried the sole disadvantage of being costly. With the 1977 vintage, the first French Tronçais oak barriques were introduced, which made a dramatic difference in the wine. Sassicaia now spends 18 to 22 months in a combination of Tronçais and Allier oak, approximately 30 percent of which is new depending on the vintage.

The first vintage of Sassicaia offered on the open market was the 1968, which produced only 7,300 bottles. For the next six years, of which two, 1969 and 1973, did not produce a harvest, yield fluctuated between 6,000 and 12,000 bottles. In 1976, concurrently an abundant year, the younger vines began to be used in the blend, and production increased to slightly over 23,000 bottles. The last vines entered production in 1981, a short year yielding only 44,000 bottles. The exceptional and exceptionally abundant 1982 vintage produced 92,000 bottles. In contrast, the 1985 vintage yielded a more characteristic quantity, slightly less than half of that 1982.

With the radical changes in the D.O.C. system of regulations as of the 1994 vintage, Sassicaia's extraordinary reputation was acknowledged through the Italian government's granting the wine its own appellation. This will have the administrative effect of expediting the wine's handling by export and customs authorities; production standards have long met or exceeded all D.O.C. regulations. Symbolically, however, this recognition has vindicated a generation of wines of which Sassicaia was the first to go beyond traditional limits in the name of quality.

Sassicaia is today considered to be the ne plus ultra of Italy's great red wines not only for its exceptional and consistent excellence but also for the creative, intuitive spirit of a revolutionary generation of new Italian wines it represents. Universally acclaimed by the wine world's most respected voices, Sassicaia remains the legacy of its creator, Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, and his son, Marchese Nicolò Incisa della Rocchetta, who carries its inimitable distinctiveness and reputation toward future vintages.