Tuscany: The Rebellion That Became a Legend

In the 1970s, a small group of Tuscan producers began planting Cabernet Sauvignon alongside or instead of Sangiovese, a direct violation of Italian wine law at the time. They labeled their wines as humble table wine and sold them anyway. Today's episode tells the story of the Super Tuscan revolution, from Sassicaia's accidental origins to the legal battles that eventually legitimized the category, and covers the producers and bottles that define this uniquely rebellious chapter in wine history.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Daily Decant, your five-minute briefing on the world of wine. Each episode delivers practical insights to help you choose, order, and talk about wine with more confidence in everyday social settings. Let's get into today's Decant. Today's episode is one of my favorite stories in modern wine history, because it involves rule breaking, family loyalty, an aristocrat with excellent taste in a wine category that didn't legally exist for decades, despite being some of the most celebrated and expensive wine in the world. We're in Tuscany and we're talking about Super Tuscans. The story starts with a man named Mario Incisa dea Roquetta, a Tuscan aristocrat who had studied in Pisa and developed a deep love for Bordeaux wine. In the 1940s, he planted Cabernet Sauvignon cuttings on his coastal estate near Bulgaria, not to sell commercially but purely for his own family's enjoyment. Bulgaria at the time was considered completely unsuitable for serious wine production. The area was known mostly for hunting and agriculture, but the gravelly, well-draining coastal soils turned out to be remarkably similar to the soils of the Les Bank and Vordeil. By the 1960s, his private wine, which he called Sasakaya, meaning place of many stones, had become so good that friends and family began urging him to release it commercially. He finally did so in 1968. Here's the problem. Italian wine law at the time, the Denominacion di Origin Controlata system was built entirely around native Italian grape varieties grown in their traditional regions. There was no legal classification for wine made from a French grape variety on the Tuscan coast. So Sasakaya, despite being made with extraordinary care, aged in French oak, and tasting like nothing else in Italy, had to be labeled and sold as Vino de Tavola, or simply table wine, the lowest possible legal classification, technically the same category as the cheapest jug wine in the country. A handful of other ambitious Tuscan producers watching what Sasakaa was doing began their own treatments through the 1970s and 80s, blending Cabernet Sauvignon with or instead of the traditional San Gervaise grape, often aging in small French oak barrels rather than the large Sylvanian casks traditionally used in Tuscany. Ansidori created Tiganello in 1971, a Sangiovese and Cabernet Blend, Tenuto San Guido, the estate behind Sasakaya, remained the flagship. These wines were all by law labeled as humble table wines, and yet international critics, particularly in the American market, began recognizing them as some of the most exciting wines coming out of Italy. Wine writers started calling them Super Tuscans, a name that stuck permanently even though it has no official legal meaning. The absurdity of the situation, some of Italy's most expensive and critically acclaimed wines technically classified at the same legal tier as the cheapest table wine eventually forced a reckoning. In 1944, Italy created the Bulgari Sasicaia DOC specifically and uniquely for Sasicaia, a designation created for a single producer, which is essentially unheard of anywhere else in the wine world. Other super Tuscans eventually found homes within the broader Bulgarian DOC or under the more flexible Indicacion Geographica Typica classification, which allowed international grape varieties while still indicating a specific geographic origin. Today, Bulgari is one of Italy's most prestigious appellations, and the Super Tuscan category is some of the most sought-after and expensive wines in the country. Sasakai itself, still made by Tenuto San Guido, roughly 85% Caffini Sauvignon and 15% Cab Front, regularly sells for $200 to $400 a bottle and is considered one of the world's greatest wines. Tiganella from Antonori remains a benchmark at a more accessible $80 to $100. And for those looking for an entry point, Guido Alberto, the second wine from Tenuto San Guido, offers a genuine taste of the estate style at around $40. A practical takeaway is that Super Tuscans proved that sometimes the most important wine innovations come from producers willing to break the rules and service of quality rather than tradition for its own sake. When you see Cabernet Sauvignon blended into a Tuscan wine, you're tasting the direct legacy of that 1970s rebellion. A handful of producers who believed in what they were making enough to accept the lowest possible legal classification rather than compromise on quality. That kind of conviction is rare in any industry and it's worth remembering every time you open up one of these bottles. Tomorrow we're headed to Chile and the country quietly making world class cabernet at a fraction of the price, including a wine that recently did something no Chilean producer had ever done before. That's today's Daily Decant. If you found this helpful, be sure to subscribe and share with your friends so you can continue building your wine knowledge in just a few minutes today. See you tomorrow for the next decant.