Tenuta San Leonardo, San Leonardo, 2003

“…one of the great wines of Italy… Sassicaia and San Leonardo seem like brothers separated in childhood.”
Wine Advocate, December 2014

“Surely the most successful Bordeaux blend of Northern Italy”
Jancis Robinson, August 2012

The wines are more akin to Bordeaux than Bolgheri with their balance and purity and (says leading Italian critic Nicolas Belfrage) ‘can have an elegance-cum-depth capable of taking on the best clarets of the world‘. San Leonardo’s owner Marchese Carlo Guerrieri Gonzaga, a rare example (at the time) of a professionally-trained aristocrat-oenologist, spent time at Tenuta San Guido back in the 1960s and subsequently employed the same legendary consultant, Giacomo Tachis, as Sassicaia for a time. San Leonardo’s outstanding Bordeaux blend has received ‘Tre Bicchiere’ from Gambero Rosso for an extraordinary thirteen vintages consecutively and was also numbered among the Guide’s ‘Fifty Wines which changed Italy’.

The 2003, whilst showing the warmth of that vintage in its ripe and spicy palate, retains an aromatic freshness and vivacity due to the cooler nights, stiff breezes off the mountain and earlier harvesting.

“One of my personal favourite Italian wines, unquestionably the top winery in the region and renowned as one of the most consistent – stylistically and qualitatively – in the whole of Italy, YET its wines remain extremely well-priced by comparison to more widely publicised names.”
Tom Harrow, Honest Grapes Wine Director