Overview

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"You have to be a bit foolhardy in order to salvage hundred-year old vines and fight the mistral and sandy soil to produce a modern wine from an ancient tradition.”

Tessa Gelisio and Massimo Pusceddu

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Only in a few places, such as on this island, sandy soils have saved the vines with their original “free foot” roots that allow to obtain the pure and ancient taste of European grapes.

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The vines are pre-phylloxera because this is one of the few parts in Europe where the terrible scourge of phylloxera failed to take root, destroying hundreds of years of human toil.

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However, the wine-growing tradition mostly died out at the end of the eighties when low yield failed to keep up with market economics. Thousands of monumental vines unique to the world, with a hundred and more years of age, have been eradicated. Since the dawn of time, in fact, the vineyards here are processed and regenerated with ancient techniques that allow to keep the plants alive for centuries.

Here and there, however, thanks to the passion and tenacity of the elderly, small plots survived and from one of these began the production of the wines “Tenuta La Sabbiosa”. Over the years, other centuries-old vineyards have been saved from extinction and have joined the constantly growing property.

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Location of Vineyard

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Tenuta La Sabbiosa stands looking out onto the sea of Sardinia on the island of Sant’Antioco. An “island within an island” which, until the eighties, was carpeted with tiny Carignano vineyards. Small particles of sapling vines, bred “like gardens” to the beaches, between the dunes and junipers, on sandy soils lashed all year round by the strong and saline mistral winds.

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Winemaking Philosophy

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Time-honoured methods, such as treating the vines with  sulphur and copper, fertilising with manure and faba beans, weeding by hand,  and green manure, are still employed. Not  forgetting modern and sustainable practices of organic farming, such as integrated pest management. This is how the true flavour of this ancient vine finds its way into the glass. Harvesting, which is strictly manual, takes place in the second half of September. Indeed, thanks to the cool mistral extremely high temperatures are never reached in the vineyards and the grapes take longer to ripen  to perfection.