​How to impress a loved one who is celebrating a personal milestone of 40th in 2020?

The perfect gift for someone's 40th is the spectacularly brilliant and yet respectfully and unassumingly, carrying its charm and all that praise casually, Sassicaia 1980.

Sassicaia obviously is not new to the fame but back in 1980 it wasn't in every collector's wine cellar, where it should have been.

(If it was in yours, you are a star ⭐ 🍷🙏)

Although it had started gaining the just recognition a few years ago in 1978 when, as we mentioned in a prior post it triumphed over a field of "great clarets" of 33 wines from 11 countries to earn that international reputation.

So, by the time the 1980 came, Sassicaia was already well known to a great extent.
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We started first looking for 1980 bottles at the end of last year for a customer and chanced upon this one.
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What excited me most personally was how this bottle, which came from a seemingly ordinary vintage has developed and flourished over its long tenure.

Aside of the critical reviews from famous critics📝 (and even more important in some way), is how it has caught the attention of the wine lovers the world over. Some are those who were lucky to buy in the days when wine wasn't an investment but more a love affair. Others are those who were willing to dig deeper (in pockets 😃).

But the virtual world is awash with ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reviews and reviewers who can't seem to get enough of this wine.

A customer opened it recently to mark such a moment and another one is holding onto it for their special moment later this year.

Four more left each @ $650 for you to have a similar opportunity to make that great day even more memorable.

Sassicaia stories.📝

Everyone has probably heard of the legendary status of the 1985 Sassicaia?

The one that was first rated 100 points by Robert Parker. Why? Because it seems he mistook it for a 1986 Mouton-Rothschild. Thanks to that tasting, the wine now trades at a premium of about 5-6x of any other great vintage of Sassicaia. Damn you Robert Parker!

But did you know 🤔, before the legendary 1985 stole the show, it was actually the 1975s which enjoyed that same legendary status and were considered among the best ever?

It seems, in 1978 Decanter held a tasting called "Great Clarets" of the world's elite wines.

This consisted of 33 wines, including Bordeaux First Growths. It was here, that the 1975 Sassicaia vintage took the first place 🏆 among all these legends.

As Jancis Robinson, who joined the heir Niocolo Incisa for a tasting of back vintages a decade ago put it, "heady, quite amazing colour. And just lovely silky, racy complex palate with all the tannins melded. Lovely fresh stuff. So racy, Just perfect now! This has lasted magnificently - much better than most red bordeaux. 19/20 points."

So not only the people born in the year 75 are absolutely the most amazing 😜, even the wines 🍷🍷 from our birth year are equally awesome!

Have a lovely weekend all.​

"If a magnum is the perfect size for two gentlemen over lunch, especially if one isn’t drinking*," what's a Double Magnum?"
Self indulgent hedonistic get-away of a couple madly in love (with wine ofcourse!)?

Large formats have always been an advisable collector's item if one intends to especially keep those wines a few decades or more because the wine gets its time to age slowly and gracefully as it pleases.

There's a lot of science behind it (mainly to do with ratio of oxygen and liquid in the bottle). The reality is it can be a bit of challenge to spot the difference even for experts in early years.

However, once the bottle goes past two decades, the differences are hard to miss. Three decades or more and any regular drinker on the street will be able to notice that evolution.

We became interested in magnums and double magnums because a few years ago customers started reaching out for special years for their 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th..

Tignanello 1997 was one of the bottles that we first sought. The bottle did such a showing we immediately started looking for larger formats. It's been a few yrs and our little collection has since grown to include a suite of magnums and double magnums across famous tuscan estates.

As I reflect on this collection I often wonder if @coravin was actually created to preserve these bottles instead? I mean a 75cl cannot last beyond a couple of days, for any serious drinker right? Can it?

Price and rarity are real challenges. But if you can get past those considerations, we would strongly urge you if you are collecting for special years, to always have a magnum or double magnum at least for that special vintage. Along with the 75cls as part of your plan, these would add some v special joy to that v v special evening in the future.🍷🎂

Decanter ran an interesting tasting comparing a bottle with a double magnum of the same wine across five vintages and other famous critics such as Jancis Robinson weighed in. Links below.

https://www.decanter.com/learn/double-magnum-versus-bottle-362886/
https://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/does-bottle-size-matter

The first quote is widely on the net alluded to by numerous people as coming from their 'friend'. Seems that 'friend' was none other than Sir Winston Churchill.🍷
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