Tenuta San Leonardo, San Leonardo, 2017
Tenuta San Leonardo, San Leonardo, 2017
- Red Still
- Organic
- Cabernet Sauvignon, Carménère, Merlot
"…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 fourteen vintages consecutively and was also numbered among the Guide’s ‘Fifty Wines which changed Italy’. Latterly the critics have got on board with great write-ups from Jancis Robinson, The Wall Street Journal (to whom we introduced the estate) and the Wine Advocate giving recent vintages of San Leonardo 94-97 point scores.
Drinking window: 2024 - 2040
What the critics say:
"The Tenuta San Leonardo 2017 San Leonardo (in a heavy glass bottle) shows subtle but unmistakable generosity and exuberance that is absolutely in line with this hot vintage. In this regard, the 2017 stands apart from past vintages from this estate that is celebrated for its elegant, undertone and long-term approach. This wine is slightly more accessible too, with plush, dark fruit, balanced oak spice and perfumed rose over a polished, silky mouthfeel."
"The 2017 vintage of San Leonardo is one of the smallest productions in recent memory: not only did it hail twice in August, drastically reducing the crop, but one of the vats cracked and the winery lost the equivalent of around 15,000 bottles of wine. Despite the challenges, it's a typically elegant red, full of scents of balsam, spicy black and red berries, tobacco and earth. A tangy attack of sweet fleshy red fruits is followed by some spicy, earthy currants on the mid-palate and fine-grained, grippy tannins. Intense, super-fresh, fragrant and complex, the long finish shows flecks of tobacco and balsamic lift."
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