Sardegna in wine

Vitis vinifera grape seeds (the domesticated grape, not the wild one) found in Cabras, on Sardinia’s west coast (📸 Carlo Pelagalli) have been carbon-dated 3,000 years.

This discovery proves that the Phoenicians or the Romans were not the first to cultivate grapes or make wine here. Instead, and amazingly, it puts us even further back than the Nuragic civilisations.

That said, the Romans, when they did arrive, found very little in the way of grape cultivation or winemaking, and did nothing to change that state of affairs while they were there.

This changed with the arrival of Basilian monks in 534 AD, who introduced the administrative division of the island into four autonomous Sardinian Giudicati, or kingdoms.

The Arab incursion which followed was first documented in 705. The Arabs retained the Giudicati organisation and continued to manage the island efficiently. One pecularity of Sardinian cuisine is that it is not fish-centric, as one might expect. This is because coastal communities were inclined to be sacked by Arab raiding parties, so the population settled inland.

The Sardinian flag, pictured, shows the Quattro Mori or ‘four moors’. (Corsica, similarly, has a Moor’s head on its flag.)

The rising Maritime Republics – notably Pisa and Genova – also kept this effective administrative system, and as a result were able to increase grapevine cultivation. The picture of a Genovese ship is from the fourteenth century.

Spain entered the picture in 1297, bringing the northwest of the island into its sphere of influence. Demonstrating how its fortunes had changed, in 1329 the Aragonese imposed export duties on Sardinian fine wine. As well as quantity and quality, the Spanish also added to the number of varieties of grapevine in commercial production on the island.

The Giudicati continued their important work, bolstered by tighter laws around production methods and quality. Phylloxera destroyed the island’s crop, and it was only in the 1950s that production started to pick up.

Sardinian wine is at the start of a golden phase of growth in prestige and quality. Yields are kept lower to improve the concentration of flavours and cellars benefit from outside investment.

The enologist Giacomo Tachis was influential in this. From the 1960s he visited the island to source fruit to use as vino da taglio, ‘cutting wine’, to boost the colour and concentration of wines produced by his famous wineries such as Tenuta San Guido (of Sassicaia fame).

These wineries include Agricola Punica (📸 Agricola Punica).

In terms of style, the acidic granite rocks of Gallura (shown at Tenuta Matteu in the header picture) make a rich, mellow, heady Vermentino, by comparison to their Ligurian and Tuscan counterparts. This is the island’s only DOCG.

Cannonau (aka Grenache – pictured) does well on the basalt of Dorgali and the granite of Ogliastra.

In the south, Carignano is making waves with the high quality, rich and complex Carignano del Sulcis DOC.

Other red grapes include Monica, Nuragus and Bovale Sardo. Indegenous whites include Nasco, Malvasia and Moscato, all of which are often vinified sweet or even liquoroso.

Perhaps most special of all, however, are the extraordinary, age-worthy, oxidised, sherry-like wines of Vernaccia di Oristano DOC. (The name is a historical anomaly – the grape is not in fact related to the Vernaccia of Tuscany.)