The Bolgheri appellation

The Marquis Mario Incisa della Rocchetta planted his first vineyard in the area of Castiglioncello of Bolgheri in 1944. The first bottle of Sassicaia, with the same label as we know it today, was offered to the public in 1968.

The Bolgheri Wine Appellation came into existence only in 1984 to define what had become two Italian 'cru' red wines: Bolgheri Superiore and Sassicaia.

It had taken that many years to confirm that the ingenious intuition of Marquis Incisa had actually created a spectacular phenomenon in the history of Italian wines. In fact, while made of supposedly "foreign" varietals, Bolgheri wines actually can offer the fullest expression of the local terroir. They are wines that can be profoundly linked to the local soils and climate from which they came. They are wines that can be highly original and personal in character, that have nothing of the standardized and global tastes associated nowadays with "international" varietals (such as Cabernet and Merlot). Indeed these fruits offer here an intense expression of the Mediterranean, while the same fruits in Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast can give a very different profile, a grand but unique interpretation of itself .

Thus Sassicaia has become one of the greatest wines of the world. But it is not alone: already since the 1980s, other producers namely Grattamacco, Ornellaia, Satta, joined the mythical Sassicaia to demonstrate that the whole territory of Bolgheri is great, not just one single wine. They in turn were joined during the 1990s by a small group of other producers, young and old, big and small, all determined to continue the search of quality with new wines and new successes. The total number of producers today in the Bolgheri Apellation is 32, 22 of whom are members of the Bolgheri DOC Producers' Association (Consorzio)

Source: Consorzio of the Bolgheri DOC Wines- www.bolgheridoc.com