2007 Tenute Dettori Badde Nigolosu Bianco

Tenute Dettori is an 80-acre estate in Badde Niogosolu, on the northwestern coast of Sardinia. It has been owned and operated by the Dettori family for many generations and is today run by Alessandro Dettori. Many vines are more than 100 years old, and the estate has been fully organic and certified biodynamic for many years. Dettori uses no modern technology, and harvests by hand. Only indigenous grapes are grown: Cannonau, Vermentino, Pascale, Moscato di Sennori and Monica. Vinous has noted that Alessandro Dettori’s wines “remain among the most fascinating being made in Italy today.”

Sardinia is Italy’s other big island. Though not as large as its southern neighbor Sicily, Sardinia has 107,000 acres of vineyards, making it Italy’s eighth largest wine producing region in vineyard acres, and the twelfth largest in quantity of wine produced. Nearly 13% of the wine produced carries a DOC label. Sardinia’s history as a rugged, remote, sparsely populated island meant that until recently most wine was made by farmers who drank it themselves or sold it to friends and local businesses. Owners of larger vineyards exported grape juice to be turned into bulk wines in Italy and France. But, as in Sicily, entrepreneurial vineyards owners in recent decades have improved their winemaking and marketed their own estate wines. Italy’s Gambero Rosso wine review notes that the “Sardinian wine horizon continues to expand (and) average quality is now high…” Because the Spanish Aragon dynasty controlled Sardinia for nearly 400 years, Spanish winemaking and Spanish grapes have been influential in Sardinia. Vermentino, thought to be a native Spanish grape, is the most widely planted white grape. Also planted are Malvasia and Vernaccia. The most commonly planted red grape is Cannonau, also called Grenache. Other red grapes of the island are Monica, Carignano (Carignan), and French varietals.