THIS SIGNATURE WINE of the renowned Cantina Sociale di Santadi is a strong, earthy wine that developed out of years of researching the native varieties of Sardegna. All the hard work of study has paid off, as Carignano del Sulcis Terre Brune is quite a winning wine.
Cantina Sociale di Santadi was the first winemaking cooperative established on the island of Sardegna. Santadi is located in the heart of Sulcis, an area of incomparable natural beauty in the southwestern corner of the island. We are talking the antithesis, both geographically and culturally, of the glamorous Costa Smeralda, a favorite summertime destination for the rich and famous. In Sulcis, time seems to stand still. The landscape is not unlike that of Arizona: deep canyons and desert sands. In fact, many of filmmaker Sergio Leone’s famous spaghetti westerns were inspired not by Utah’s Monument Valley, but by his visits to Sardegna. The area was once a top-ranked mining center, and many villages were built nearby. When the mining stopped, the small towns were abandoned, much like the towns in the American West were when the gold rush ended.
The Cantina di Santadi came as a wake-up call for the region, something concrete in an otherwise unstable environment in a difficult moment in history. The cooperative offered an economic alternative to many of the people living in the area when the mines began to close. In addition, the creation of the winery led to an important study of the territory and the discovery of native grape varieties with great potential. Mineral sediments were found just yards beneath the soil in Sulcis, allowing for traditional viticulture that didn’t depend on American rootstock because the vines were resistant to aphids and phylloxera. The farmers of Sulcis, with their steadfast faith and determination, are responsible for having reversed the gloomy economic situation on the island and for paving the way for quality Sardinian wines. The cooperative also made a wise decision in collaborating with legendary enologist Giacomo Tachis, the father of Sassicaia and Tignanello, who helped to create some of the most important wines in the Santadi portfolio. Today the co-op has around 250 members who tend to more than 1,500 acres of vineyards. Collectively, the producers make just less than 2 million bottles of wine per year, divided among full-bodied reds, mineral-rich whites, and warm, welcoming dessert wines.
Sulcis is located to the west of the Sardinian capital of Cagliari, situated between the flatlands of Campidano and the southwestern coast of the island. The 66 square miles of territory are dominated by arid, desertlike landscapes of remarkable beauty. The beaches directly in front of the islands of Sant’Antioco and San Pietro are dotted with white sand dunes and dramatic rocky cliffs overlooking the deep sea. Moving inland, you arrive at the rural part of Sulcis, where the mineral mines were once located. Agriculture and mining existed side by side for years, but when the coal ran out, farming came to dominate the local economy. Naturally, the land is rich in minerals, with sandy topsoil. In fact, some of the grapes that go into Santadi wines come from vineyards built on costal beaches—areas that are quite difficult to farm. In this corner of Sardegna, the climate is mild year-round, with the exception of the summer months, when it is decidedly hot and dry. The vegetation that grows around the vineyards is referred to as macchia mediterranea, or Mediterranean scrub. There are oak, olive, and strawberry trees, not to mention the cork oaks used to make the famous Sardinian corks.
Sulcis and Sardegna owe a lot to the work of the Cantina Sociale di Santadi, and to Giacomo Tachis. The area and the island are home to native grape varieties that were saved from extinction and relaunched onto the market by the cooperative. Nuragus, nasco, and vermentino are all native Sardinian white wine grapes, but the greater renaissance was based on the main red grape of Sulcis, carignano. The signature Santadi wine, Carignano del Sulcis Terre Brune, was made possible by clonal research, the choice of the alberello training system, and the use of both traditional and modern winemaking techniques. The grapes for this wine come from the old vineyards in southern Sulcis that still have old rootstock. The soil in these vineyards is loose and soft, composed of sand and some limestone. During the summer, the climate can be scorching. Harvest takes place between the end of September and mid-October. Alcoholic fermentation occurs in steel vats and lasts fifteen days, during which the maceration of the must on the skins allows for the complete release of the polyphenols. The secondary fermentation happens after the wine is transferred to barriques, at the beginning of December. Terre Brune ages for sixteen to eighteen months in new French oak barriques, followed by a year in the bottle.
This is an earth-driven wine that is dark ruby red with granite-colored hues; the bouquet is intense, with aromas of jam, hay, dry sage, rose petals, and aromas of Mediterranean bush. In the mouth, the wine is exuberant, dense, and rich in tannins, which give the wines its elegance and finesse. The pronounced acidity signals a long-lasting wine, which Terre Brune has proved to be. At seventy or eighty dollars on a wine list, this is one of my go-to wines.
MADE FROM A grape that has flourished in Sardegna, specifically, for centuries, Tenores is a unique wine. The particular frangrances of Tenores come from the ancient land and the unique care of master winemaker Alessandro Dettori.
The Dettori family has ancient roots but has only a recent history when it comes to making wine. Alessandro Dettori founded the family winery in 2000 and began producing wines that reflect his strong personality. Over the course of a few years, he became the big new thing in the Sardinian wine world, competing with names like Argiolas and Santadi.
Alessandro Dettori didn’t really become a star overnight. His success should be attributed in part to his family’s history of working the land, growing grapes, and tending to fruit trees. In addition, Alessandro is an excellent communicator and is a champion of natural processes. He is one of a small group of Italian winemakers who try not to intervene with the natural cultivation and vinification processes. Alessandro treats his vines only twice a year with sulfur to protect the plants from humidity. Alessandro owns 45 beautiful acres of land in Sardegna, but his production never exceeds 45,000 bottles. His approach has produced wines that on first taste may seem surprisingly lean, at times rough, and often overevolved. The wines need to oxygenate for a long time before drinking but become something really special. Alessandro is also proud of the fact that his farm is self-sustaining. In addition to wine, he produces wheat, vegetables, fruit, and extra-virgin olive oil. His property is located in a dry and unknown part of Sardegna, far away from the Emerald Coast frequented by international VIPs. Alessandro’s wines taste strongly of the soil of inland Sardegna, a place cloaked in mystery. Wine lovers and critics were quick to fall in love with Alessandro’s wines because of their perfumes and ancestral flavors.
One of the most distinctive elements of Alessandro Dettori’s vineyards is that the grapevines are all planted using the alberello training system and that some of these magnificent plants are almost 120 years old. These plants are still alive thanks to the local farmers who invested their lives in the vineyard. Alberello is the only type of training system that would work here because cordone speronato or Guyot would be threatened by the strong winds that whip through the vineyards during the winter. The town of Sennori, home to the Dettori winery, is located in Romangia, an area named after the Romans, who introduced grapes and olives here. Romangia is covered with hills and has an altitude of 820 feet. The soil is composed primarily of limestone and is creamy white in color. In addition to grapes, the land is planted with olive trees, macchia mediterranea (Mediterranean scrub), and pear-producing cactus. The vineyards have been left unchanged—trained in the alberello system, without irrigation, and with a density of 2,000 to 2,800 plants per acre. If you do a simple calculation, you will arrive at a surprising fact: If the yield per acre is only 2,700 pounds for 2,000 plants, this means that each plant produces no more than 21 ounces of grapes per plant, a trifling amount.
Tenores is made from cannonau, an grape variety that is practically considered indigenous, though it was brought to Sardegna by the Spanish in the seventeenth century. Cannonau adapted extremely well to the island and has come to represent Sardinian wine as a whole. Alessandro Dettori’s interpretation of the grape is very different from what you find in the majority of cannonau available on the market. Alessandro and his father hand-select the grapes. Dettori does not use industrial yeasts or enzymes in this wine, nor does he allow a gram of sulfur dioxide (solfo) to be used during vinification (for the majority of the wines, it is not added later either). Tenores is neither clarified nor filtered and is not even stabilized with tartaric acid. The wine is simply racked two, or a maximum of three, times. There is no wood in the Dettori cellar; the wines are kept in steel and cement. Alessandro bottles his wines by hand together with a crew of family members. The only technology used in the cellar is cold air. The grapes, must, and wine are moved from place to place by gravity. Wood, wood chips, added tannins, various aromas, and all the things commonly used to make wine more approachable are forbidden here.
Tenores has a sequence of very complex and unique aromas. At first, the wine smells like blueberries and currants, followed by licorice, orange peel, chocolate, lavender, and star anise. In the mouth, it is strong and muscular with firm tannins. The alcohol is balanced by a fresh acidity. This wine is truly unique.
FOR MOST, Argiolas is synonymous with Sardinian wine. Although there are now many excellent Sardinian wine producers, this winery, located at the gates of Cagliari, is still considered throughout the world as Sardegna’s gold standard.
For over seventy years, the history of the Argiolas family has centered around Antonio, the unforgettable, charismatic founder of the company. Today, Antonio is no longer with the Argiolas family: He passed away in 2009, at the age of 102, leaving behind a story of intuition, courage, and passion. Antonio’s children and young grandchildren carry on his spirit and his dream of blending tradition and history with innovation and modernity. Antonio played a fundamental role in reintroducing a countless number of indigenous grape varieties to the market and importing barriques into his cellar—a novelty at the time. He also created an important commercial network for his wines, both in Italy and abroad. Antonio was a great man who, thanks to his wine, brought Sardegna into the modern world.
At heart, Sardegna is a savage, rural place. The mountainous zones have nurtured legends of people living between reality and fantasy, legality and lawlessness, solidarity and solitude. The essence of Sardinian winemaking can be found here: where the sun beats down on the hard, dry soil; where towns are still linked together by unpaved roads; where farmers tend to their fields on horseback; and where sheepherding is still commonplace. (There are 7 million sheep in Sardegna.) If Sicilia has culture, Sardegna has nature.
Perhaps the person who could best attest to this axiom is Giacomo Tachis, the legendary Italian enologist. Giacomo brought decades of experience working throughout Italy—first Piemonte, then Toscana, then Sicilia—to Argiolas. Here in Sardegna he was able to carry out his mission of making a wine capable of expressing the spirit of an entire region. The Turriga project became such a mission. This red wine is not an expression of a single vineyard or cru, but the quintessence of a land, a climate, and a tradition. Turriga could not have been made were it not for the combination of Tachis, Argiolas, and Sardegna.
The Argiolas winery is located in Serdiana, a few miles north of Cagliari, in the southernmost part of the island. The Serdiana area is actually a contradiction of the classic image of inland Sardegna: It is green and fairly rich in water. Over the centuries, this region has been occupied by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Spanish, and the people of Piemonte, during the period when the Kingdom of Sardegna was ruled by the Savoy dynasty. However, prior to all this, the island was home to the Sardinians, a population of the second millennium B.C. that decorated the territory with nuraghe, or cone-shaped stone towers. These megalithic monuments were the center of the social life of the ancient Sardinians to the point of becoming the name of the civilization: the nuragic civilization. The nuraghe are the largest and best-conserved monuments in Europe today and are considered the symbol of the island. The 620 acres of Argiolas vineyards are set against this magnificent backdrop. The vineyards are divided into five estates, the main one located in Serdiana. Here, the fertile soil is primarily calcareous marl and sandstone. Three of the estates are in Trexenta, an area of vineyards and olive and fruit trees. The fifth property, and the most recently purchased, is located in the arid zone of Sulcis and is dedicated to the cultivation of the carignano grape.
The Turriga estate is situated just north of Serdiana, near the town of Senorbi: This area has a rich archaeological imprint that is depicted on the bottle with an image of mother earth. The soil is calcareous and fairly dense, dotted frequently with stones. Turriga is a blend of cannonau, carignano, bovale sardo, and malvasia nera: an extraordinary representation of the island’s ampelography. The climate is Mediterranean, dry and subject to drought, with hot, windy summers. After the harvest, which is done by hand between the end of September and mid-October (depending on the grape), the fruit is pressed and fermented at a controlled temperature between 82 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Maceration takes sixteen to eighteen days, after which the wine is transferred to new French oak barriques, where it rests for eighteen to twenty-four months, and where malolactic fermentation occurs. The resulting wine is deep red in color, both strong and elegant at the same time. On the nose, the wine has strong notes of ripe fruit and dried flowers, as well as Mediterranean brush. The wine is easily recognizable in a blind tasting. Tobacco, leather, and chocolate notes develop in the wine as it ages. In the mouth, the wine has a splendid balance of structure and silkiness. It is round and tight. Its tannic structure gives the wine its long, well-balanced finish. Turriga is an immortal red wine that will carry on the spirit of Antonio Argiolas for another hundred years.