The Grand Vin of the North: The Past, Present and Future of San Leonardo 

BY ERIC GUIDO | JULY 28, 2020

We have all heard of the Super Tuscan, the category that transformed the popularity of Italian wine, elevating it from pizza parlors and large glass jugs and placing it on the want lists of consumers and collectors around the globe. Super Tuscans changed Italian wine forever, introducing international varieties to Tuscan soils and proving that Italy could bring its own flair to the Bordeaux blend. This didn’t happen overnight, nor did it happen in a single decade, but today there’s little chance that any wine lover with a finger on the pulse of Italy hasn’t heard of the renowned Sassicaia. 

However, what those same collectors often miss is that the Bordeaux blend has excelled and continues to excel in another part of Italy, thanks to a family that’s deeply rooted in their region, its history and the varietals that separate it from all others. It’s a wine that transports you to the place where it’s created, yet somehow also to another time, communicating the aromas, flavors and elegance that are often lost in the Bordeaux blends of the current day. That region is Trentino in the northeast of Italy, and the wine is San Leonardo.

A Story Worth Telling 

Tenuta San Leonardo boasts a wine-producing history that goes back over 1,000 years, beginning when the Frati Crociferi (a religious order) practiced winemaking, supplying the Austro-Hungarian court at Vienna. In the 1700s, the Gresti family purchased the estate, and then, over 100 years later, they joined with the Marchesi Guerrieri Gonzaga family through marriage, creating the modern-day Tenuta San Leonardo. For decades afterward, the family continued to produce Trentino-styled wines, with a focus on Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Riesling. However, it wasn’t until Carlo Guerrieri Gonzaga took the reins of the estate in the 1970s that the Bordeaux blend as we know it today came along.

Carlo Guerrieri Gonzaga was driven by a passion for wine, primarily that of Bordeaux, which he developed while studying oenology at the Station Federal Lausanne in Switzerland. However, when the time came to return to his family’s estate, Gonzaga discovered that his father had only recently hired a new winemaker. Unable to apply his skills at San Leonardo, Gonzaga found his way to Tuscany, where he began to work with his longtime friend Mario Incisa della Rocchetta of Tenuta San Guido. This was where the inspiration for San Leonardo truly hit, as he was working his way up through that cellar, learning from the great Giacomo Tachis himself, gaining an understanding of how Bordeaux varietals could excel on the Italian coast, and watching the success of Sassicaia slowly growing.

Then, in 1974, everything changed. With the death of his father, Carlo Guerrieri Gonzaga inherited the Tenuta San Leonardo estate and vineyards, yet he was also faced with succession taxes that ultimately forced him to sell a large portion of the family vineyards. However, the remaining property still gave him the raw materials to make his dream come true. Guerrieri Gonzaga began to look at the vineyards with a set of experienced eyes, planting new sites using Guyot training and cordon spur, while lowering yields throughout the family's double-pergola-trained vines. He knew that he had the perfect location: in the Adige River valley, between the slopes of Monte Baldo and the Lessini Mountains, which provided strong differentials between day and night temperatures throughout the season. Here, cold winds were blocked by the Alps to the north, while the warming currents of the Ora del Garda protected the vines from fungal diseases.