Perfect for summer: Sardinian wines from Sella & Mosca

With summer fast approaching, I’m already thinking about what I’ll uncork with my salads, seafood, and BBQ. A recent tasting (virtual, of course) reminded me that I could be content all summer long drinking the wines of Sella & Mosca.

Flying into Sardinia’s Alghero airport, you pass over a vast sea of vines, stretching some 1600 acres. These belong to Sella & Mosca, a landmark both from the air (these being the second largest contiguous vineyards in all of Italy, after Banfi) and in the history of Sardinian wine.

Sella & mosca was first established as a vine nursery in 1899

the vine catalog

The property was first used as a nursery for 1,671 types of vines when it was founded in 1899. Two gentleman from Piedmont, Eriminio Sella and Edgardo Mosca, came to the island on a hunting trip. Being a lawyer from a banking family and an engineer respectively, they knew little about wine. But they knew a good opportunity when they saw one (I’ve been told they went to Alaska to check out the Gold Rush), and this was an opportunity staring them in the face.

They knew that Piedmont had suffered through the scourge of phylloxera, as did most of mainland Europe. But Sardinia wasn’t affected. “Isolation has the same root as island or isola in Italian,” notes Alfonso Gagliano, Sella & Mosca’s North American brand ambassador. That isolation saved Sardinian viticulture.

So the duo set about establishing a nursery close to the port of Alghero, where crates of baby vines could be shipped to all parts of Europe and as far as Argentina. Shortly after, they seized another opportunity: They bought more than 1300 acres of land from the township of Alghero. It was uncultivated marshland, where three rivers converge. Full of rocks, it was being sold on the cheap. With financing from the Sella Bank, they bought it and reclaimed the soil. In 1903, they built their first cellar and started producing and bottling wine.

Since then, Sella & Mosca has passed through several hands. It’s now part of Terra Moretti, a small but esteemed group that owns Bellavista in Franciacorta, Petra in the Maremma, and Teruzzi & Puthod in San Gimignano, among other wineries.

Torbato

This obscure grape is the reason I went to visit Sella & Mosca in the first place back in 2016. I’d been knocked out by its unique aromatics at a Tre Bicchieri tasting and learned that the torbato grape would have died out completely if it hadn’t been for them. With its thin skin, torbato is difficult to grow, and its high pectins make it hard to clarify, so most farmers have abandoned the grape.

We tasted two versions. If you like your sparkling wine brimming with fruit, you’ll love Torbato Brut ($21). This charmat-method sparkler is a pretty straw color and has a bit of salinity and savory notes backing the fruit. It’s just the ticket for raw oysters and all things seafood.  Ditto for Terre Bianche ($21), their still torbato. It has a complex bouquet of pink grapefruit, chamomile, and yellow plum, with beguiling bergamot notes. There’s also something that hints at diesel, like in a fine aged Riesling. I’m totally smitten with this wine.

Vermentino

Whenever I’m asked to recommend affordable summer wines, Sardinian vermentino tops my list. It’s the island’s most prevalent white grape. And Sella & Mosca’s La Cala Vermentino ($14) set the prevailing style, which is clean, crisp, and fresh.

Back in the 1970s, vermentino was the complete opposite: big in alcohol, high in residual sugar, and often oxidized. At lunch, local factory workers would dilute it with soft drinks. Sella & Mosca came up with a lighter style by converting their vermentino vineyards to a pergola system. That provided shade, thus lowering both sugar and alcohol.

I love vermentino’s minerality, which is particularly distinct when grown in limestone, like here. La Cala also has tropical scents of mango and papaya, coupled with a creamy texture and bright acidity. It’s a refreshing summer wine, perfectly suited for grilled seafood with a squeeze of lemon.

A replica of an ancient Egyptian bas relief showing a wine press, which Eriminio Sella photographed while in Egypt. This is now part of the Sella & Mosca logo.

Cannonau

If vermentino is Sardinia’s white flagship, then cannonau is its red. Cannonau was long thought to have come from Spain during the period of Spanish domination in the 1700s. That thinking was reinforced by the fact that cannonau shares 80 percent of its DNA with garnacha (grenache in French).

But that theory was smashed to smithereens in 2014, when archaeologists discovered 3,000-year-old carbonized grape seeds in an underground storage silo used by the indigenous Nuragi people — a sort of Bronze Age fridge. So the speculation today is that cannonau is native to Sardinia, and the Nuragi people were the first to make wine in the Mediterranean. Whatever the case, cannonau pre-dates the Spaniards’ arrival by two millennia.

In the panorama of Sardinia cannonau, I find Sella & Mosca’s Cannonau di Sardegna Riserva ($18) particularly appealing. It’s a lighter style that plays up the grape’s ethereal perfumes, so suggestive of violets and red fruit of the woods. There’s a balsamic accent adding depth, and gentle silky tannins. This wine would go quite well with a North African tangine. I can vouch that it went beautifully with Melissa Clark’s recipe for white bean soup with turkey and greens.

Tanca Farrà

Tanca Farrà ($26), a 50/50 cabernet/cannonau blend, has deeper color and brawnier tannins than the straight cannonau. “We want to take from the cannonau the elegance, and we want to take from the cabernet the structure and color,” says winemaker Giovanni Pinna. The cabernet ages in second-use French barrique for 12 months, while the cannonau spends that time in large oak cask. The result is a complex mix of floral, savory, and balsamic notes, with enough tannins to give it some heft but be approachable (and delicious) now.

It was just by chance I discovered just how good this blend is with barbecued ribs, thanks to our doggie bag of leftovers from Dinosaur BBQ. My husband and I were both pigs in heaven with this match.

Bottom line: Sella & Mosca offers an array of summer wines at a good price. Find them here.

For more about Sardinian wines, see my article “A History of Sardinian Wine in 7 Bottles.”

A cove (cala) on the north coast of sardinia, near sella & Mosca