Wine & guides: no one makes them all agree. San Leonardo 2019 and Sassicaia 2021 the best

Those who judge only the quality of the wine in the glass, those who also judge the production methods, those who look only at native grape varieties, and so on: with an ever wider and more specific variety of evaluation criteria, finding a wine, even in the enormous Italian production offer, capable of agreeing with all the nationally circulated guides, looks more and more like a “mission impossible”. This is confirmed by WineNews’ traditional comparison, which looks at the best lists of wines from the 9 national reference guides and publications. And while no one in the 2025 editions made the en plein, coming close to doing the feat, with 8 out of 9 awards, are, as has happened in the past, two sacred monsters of Italian wine, such as Tenuta di San Leonardo’s San Leonardo 2019 from Trentino and Tenuta San Guido’s Bolgheri Sassicaia 2021 from Tuscany. They are the single most awarded wines from the comparison of the different publications of Italy analyzed by WineNews, which include the “classic” and most “senior” guides (“Vini d’Italia Gambero Rosso”. with its “Tre Bicchieri”, “I Vini di Veronelli” with the “Tre Stelle Oro”, “Bibenda” of the Italian Sommelier Foundation, with the “Cinque Grappoli”, the “Essential Guide to the Wines of Italy” by Daniele Cernilli, with the “faccini”, “Vitae” by the Ais sommeliers, with the “Gem”, which from this edition symbolizes all those labels that deserve a score of 94 or more points out of 100, and again “Vite, vigne, vini d'Italia Slow Wine” by Slow Food, with “Top Wine” and “Vino Slow”), to which, to complete the picture, three publications peculiar character were placed side by side in the comparison: “Vinibuoni d’Italia” - Tci guide (which, by its editorial choice, mainly considers wines from native grape varieties, with the wines in its “Top 300”), “The Best 100 Wines and Winemakers of Italy” of “Corriere della Sera” (a guide edited by the deputy editor of the newspaper of via Solferino Luciano Ferraro and James Suckling, which condenses the best of the Italian wine scene into a very limited selection of wines) and “La Guida ai 1000 Vini d’Italia” by “L’Espresso”, edited by Luca Gardini (also with a very selective list of award-winning wines, whose “I 110 cum laude” we have taken into consideration, while not included in the comparison is Luca Maroni’s Yearbook of the Best Italian Wines, which follows his very peculiar concept of “wine-fruit” evaluation).
Behind the two wines honored by 8 guides and publications, they succeed in the laudable feat of putting 7 out of 9 on notice with only 3 other wines, the Sicilian Passito di Pantelleria Ben Rye 2021 from Donnafugata, the Rallo family winery, a reference in the wine of Sicily, the Brunello di Montalcino Vigna del Suolo 2019 from Argiano, the winery of Brazilian entrepreneur Andrè Esteves led by Bernardino Sani, and the Marche-based Kurni 2022 from Oasi degli Angeli, one of the most celebrated names in the region.
Literally a handful of labels, then, those capable of getting almost everyone to agree. And there aren't many more names, if you widen the mesh to those who received 6 top honors out of 9: there are Marisa Cuomo’s Campania-based Costa d’Amalfi Furore Bianco Fiorduva (but with some guides awarding the 2022 vintage and some others the 2023), Gianfranco Fino’s Puglia-based Es 2022, Valentini’s Abruzzo-based Trebbiano d’Abruzzo 2020, Giodo’s Tuscan Brunello di Montalcino 2019, Brunello di Montalcino 2019 by Fuligni, Brunello di Montalcino Montosoli 2019 by Altesino, Brunello di Montalcino Madonna delle Grazie 2019 by Il Marroneto, Bolgheri Superiore 2021 by Grattamacco, I Sodi di San Niccolò 2020 by Castellare di Castellina, Isole and Olena’s Cepparello 2021, Rocca delle Macìe’s Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Sergio Zingarelli 2020 and Antinori’s Solaia (with the 2020 and 2021 vintages), Petrono’s Galatrona (again with multiple vintages, the 2021 and the 2022) and also the Piedmontese Barolo Vignarionda Ester Canale Rosso 2020 by Giovanni Rosso and the Barbaresco Pajorè 2021 by Sottimano, the Sardinian Turriga 2020 by Argiolas, the Sicilian Faro 2021 by Palari, and again the Veneto Amarone classico 2020 by Allegrini, and the Amarone Riserva 2015 by Brigaldara.
Few, very few wines then, the ones that get most people to agree, if one looks at Italian critics, as opposed to wineries, which, on the other hand, from cross-referencing the same sources, are a good number more representative of the complex Italian wine scene (net of some unlikely but possible oversights in the comparison, made by now of hundreds and hundreds of labels to verify). But, as the great writer Leonardo Sciascia put it, “To each his own”. Not least because, for the sake of the record, it is also worth remembering that not all producers send their wines for tasting to all publications, and not all guides or rankings are concerned with finding some of the wines on the market that are not sent to them.