What Makes Sassicaia Special: The Empty Bottles in Italian Restaurants, and How to Find Older Vintages

Step into an Italian restaurant in Tokyo and you will often see empty wine bottles displayed on shelves or behind the counter, labels facing out. Among them, one name appears again and again: Sassicaia. The bottle is empty, so why is it treasured?

A wine whose empty bottle becomes a story

Sassicaia is the original "Super Tuscan", the wine that changed the history of Italian wine. It is chosen for anniversaries, important business dinners and celebrations, so an opened bottle becomes the memory of a special moment for both the guest and the restaurant. That is why the empty bottle is kept and displayed with pride. Many fine restaurants like to hold back at least one bottle, even off the list, for their most valued guests.

Why aged vintages are getting hard to find

Sassicaia is made in limited quantities while global demand keeps rising. As a result, ready to drink older vintages are becoming harder to find every year, both online and in restaurants. Our advice at Swirl is to look for the vintage (the production year) while you still can. In restaurants especially, the years a venue can offer depend heavily on how long it has worked with its importer.

Building the sommelier relationship that unlocks the off-list bottle

Some of Tokyo's finest venues deliberately keep their best vintages off the list, reserving them for special guests. In Japan, these bottles move on connection and a long standing relationship rather than on price. As you build trust with the sommelier at your favourite restaurant, there may come a day when they quietly say that they have something good that is not on the list, and bring out a bottle just for you. That is one of the great pleasures of a life with wine.

Enjoy this wine

At Swirl, you can buy Sassicaia in our online shop. If you are looking for a particular vintage, please feel free to ask us first.

For Sassicaia's history and how it is made, see our complete Sassicaia guide, and meet the producer on the Tenuta San Guido winery page.