A few miles from Bolgheri there is a place named La California; maybe it was fate that led to this area being christened the California of Italy, or indeed, sometimes, the Italian Bordeaux.
All this was due to the two Della Gherardesca sisters, one who married a man of the Incisa della Rocchetta family, and the other one who married one of the Antinori's.
Mario Incisa Della Rocchetta invented Sassicaia, considered by one authoritative magazine to be the most famous Italian wine in the world .
Lodovico Antinori created one of the most fascinating wine-cellars in the world, and for his Ornellaia (now owned by the Frescobaldi family) he received the award for the best Italian Cabernet Sauvignon from the magazine Decanter in 1995.
Piero Antinori transformed the production of rosé, very fashionable in the seventies, into the magnificent red wine Guado Al Tasso, which immediately found a place among the top wines in the country. But the process did not stop with Sassicaia, Ornellaia and Guado Al Tasso; since then there has been a flowering of young and enthusiastic producers, who soon joined the highest echelons in oenology with well-deserved fame, not just in the neighbourhood of Bolgheri, but also with DOC wines from adjacent Montescudaio, Val di Cornia and Elba.
The landscape situated on a strip of land, which runs parallel to the sea contains all that a visitor might wish for:
- medieval towns in which life is led at a more human pace,
- hills covered with dense woods where it is not unusual to encounter wild boars, roe deer and fallow deer,
- views that blur the green of the vegetation with the intense blue of the sky,
- friendly and welcoming locals,
- natural tasty food and exquisite superb wines that will add that special something to your trips.