Nuragus - Sardinia, Italy

The last time we visited the island of Sardinia (to take a look at the Torbato grape), we examined the history of the island from around the 15th Century to the present day in order to account for the Spanish origin of many of the grapes that are currently cultivated there.  Today I'd like to travel a little farther back in time in order to take a look at the Nuragic Civilization, who inhabited the island of Sardinia from around the 18th Century BC to around the 2nd Century AD, because some authorities believe that it is during this time period that the Nuragus grape either arrived on the island of Sardinia or was born there.

The Nuragic Civilization was, in its beginnings, primarily an agricultural civilization.  As the Bronze Age dawned in Europe, Sardinia became an important economic and military power because of the vast reserves of copper and lead that were discovered on the island.  Sardinia was known for the fine metals produced by the there and the Nuraghe became traders and sometimes adversaries with the other great civilizations of the time.  Around 1000 BC, the Phoenician Civilization began to trade heavily with the Sardinians, and in 540 BC, they attempted to conquer the island.  The attack was repelled, but the Phoenicians tried again in 509 BC and were eventually successful in conquering parts of coastal Sardinia and much of the southern portion of the island where many of the mines were located.  The Nuraghe retreated to the mountainous interior of Sardinia and were never really a major player on the world stage again.  In 238 BC, Sardinia was ceded to Rome as a result of Rome's victory over Carthage in the first Punic War and, over time, the Nuraghe commingled with the Romans and other ethnic groups to the extent that they just kind of eventually didn't exist.

Nuraghe Losa in Sardinia

The Nuragic Civilization left many important monuments to their existence, though.  All over the island of Sardinia, there are these tower-shaped stone ruins that are known as Nuraghe.  There are estimated to be about 7,000 of these Nuraghe throughout Sardinia, which means that there is, on average, about one Nuraghe for every three square kilometers of the island.  It is thought that there were many more of these towers during the height of the Nuragic Civilization but, despite their prevalence, no one really knows what the Nuraghe were used for.

All of which brings us to today's grape, Nuragus.  Nuragus is a very old Sardinian grape and it is thought to either be native to Sardinia or to have arrived with the Phoenicians at some point in the ancient past.  The grape takes its name from the mysterious Nuraghe that are found all over the island, just in case you thought that the history lesson above was gratuitous.  It is Sardinia's most widely planted white grape with approximately 8,000 acres devoted to it, and while it is grown all over the island (but nowhere else on earth), the main concentration of plantings are in the south around the town of Cagliari.  Nuragus is popular with growers because it is resistant to a variety of molds and vine diseases while also being capable of very high yields.  It has a number of colorful local nicknames like abbondosa (abundant), axina de poporus (grape of the poor), pagadepidu (debt-payer), preni tineddus (fill up the vats) and burdu (bastard).  The VIVC also lists Malvasia di Luras, Nuragus Moscatello and Nuragus Trebbiana as synonyms, though Nuragus is not related to Malvasia, Muscat or Trebbiano, as far as I know.

Wines made from the Nuragus grape are not intended to be aged, as I found out when I picked up a bottle of the 2007 Argiolas "S'elagas" Nuragus di Cagliari locally for around $16.  In the glass the wine was a medium gold color.  The nose was moderately intense with honeysuckle flower, ripe apple and honeyed pear aromas.  In the glass the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  Straight out of the refrigerator, this wine really didn't taste like anything and was too bland and bitter to really drink.  Once it got down to room temperature, though, flavors of apple peel, overripe apples, grapefruit peel and honey started to show up.  This bottle was clearly over the hill and was so washed out that I actually brought it back to the shop I bought it from and exchanged it for another wine.  It wasn't completely dead, but it was right on the brink and the whisper of life that it had left wasn't enough for me to feel that I was able to get a good sense for what the wine might taste like.

I had held off writing this post because I don't like to write about grapes that I've only been able to taste from flawed bottles or flawed wines.  Since I wasn't able to find a newer vintage of this wine in the Boston area, I had resigned myself to perhaps not writing about Nuragus at all, but reader Tony from Pennsylvania was nice enough to send me his tasting note for the 2010 vintage of this wine, which I've printed in full below.  Tony's bottle set him back about $15 at one of the Pennsylvania state stores.

Tony's tasting note:

Color:
Between a straw yellow and light gold.

Nose:
The nose was quite aromatic with a good deal of melon and pear in the nose, with some mild herbaceousness, as well. It also had a note of honey, which became more noticeable as the wine warmed up. Lots of complexity.

Taste:
Creamy mouthfeel, rich texture with medium-high acidity. Touch of bitterness on the finish, like bitter almond. The Argiolas website claims this is a characteristic of the grape, but I’ve noticed it on a few other Italian whites, such as Arneis and some Vermentinos, as well. When the wine was still chilled, the fruit was muted and the nose dominated. Taste was more of a lighter white with good acidity, a fairly rich texture, and a touch of bitterness on the finish. The taste changed dramatically as the wine warmed up. The melon and pear fruit, herbs, and honey flavors really opened up, matching the nose. Interesting, the honey characteristic did not impart any sweetness. More like the taste and richness of honey, but no sugar. It didn’t overwhelm, just added to the complexity. As it warmed up, the term that kept coming to my mind was “exotic”. Not in a cloying way, as the acidity did a nice job of keeping things in balance. In addition, it never lost that touch of bitter almond at the end. The website mentions nothing about the wine seeing any wood, but there may have been some malolactic fermentation that would help explain the richness.

Overall, a well-made and intriguing wine. If you keep it cold, such as in an ice bucket or refrigerator, then this would match well with appetizers or fish. It has a complex nose, but the taste remains light enough to go well with light dishes. But if you let it warm up, you’ll definitely want something to go with the richness that develops in the taste. Next time, I think I’d like to try this wine at cellar temperature with a nice, creamy Brie. That should be an interesting match!

Torbato - Alghero, Sardinia, Italy

It's been awhile since we visited the isolated and unique island of Sardinia in Italy.  A little over a year ago we took a look at the Monica grape grown there and took a brief look at Sardinian wine in general.  I mention in that post that Sardinia is home to a handful of unique varieties, which should make it fertile ground for me, but it can be difficult to find wines made from these grapes.  Part of it is just low production.  Though Sardinia is the second largest island in the entire Mediterranean, it only ranks 15th among Italian regions in terms of total wine production.  Further, a lot of the wines that end up on US shores are made from some of the less unique grapes grown on the island, like Carignan or Cannonau, which is just the local clone of Grenache.  I do occasionally come across something interesting, though, and today's post is focused on one of those finds.

Before we can talk about Torbato, we need to talk a little bit about the history of Sardina.  Sardinia is currently a part of Italy, but that hasn't always been the case.  While the occupational and political history of Sardinia is long and complex, there is one era of Sardinia's history that seems to have more viticultural importance than any other.  In the 15th Century, the Kingdom of Aragon, which was located in what is now southeastern Spain, successfully conquered Sardinia and brought it under rule.  In 1479, King Ferdinand II of Aragon married Isabel of Castile, who was Queen of the Kingdom of Castile and León.  This marriage essentially unified the various Kingdoms of Spain into a single political entity under a common monarch.  This meant that Sardinia was now a part of Spain, and it remained a Spanish territory until 1708, when it passed into Austrian hands.  It pinballed between various European powers until 1861, when it joined the newly formed Kingdom of Italy.

It is thought that many of the grapes currently grown on Sardinia were brought to the island at various times throughout Spanish rule.  Grenache and Carignan are both thought to be ultimately Spanish in origin, as is the Monica grape we examined previously.  Torbato is thought to share this same kind of geographical heritage, though the evidence for this seems to be mostly anecdotal rather than scientific.  I've not been able to find any studies linking Torbato to any Spanish grapes either directly or familially and most sources qualify their statements of Spanish origin with words like "purportedly" or "supposedly."  The grape does have a link to the European mainland, though, as it was once grown widely in the Roussillon region of southern France under the name Tourbat or Malvoisie de Roussillon (though it is not related to any of the other members of the Malvasia family as far as I know).  The theory of a Spanish origin for Torbato seems to rest on the fact that Roussillon was also under the rule of the Kingdom of Aragon for awhile and so the grape (along with Grenache, Carignan, Monica and others) must have been disseminated to both Sardinia and Roussillon from Aragon itself at some point.

Tourbat has been virtually eliminated from the vineyards of France today and it looked like Torbato was destined to meet the same fate a few decades back.  The problem didn't seem to be quality, but rather than the vine had some unusual characteristics that made it troublesome to maintain.  The primary problem was that the stems on the vine aren't very strong, so as the grapes ripened and got bigger and heavier, they had a tendency to fall right off the plant.  If the grapes fell off before they were fully ripe, then they weren't much use to the growers.  If the growers weren't able to retrieve the grapes from the ground soon enough, then the grapes rotted and were a total waste.  Further, the grapes themselves have a lot of fibrous material within the pulp which limits the amount of juice you can get from each berry.  This means that the juice yields from each vine are lower than for other vines.  The low yields coupled with the viticultural demands were too much for most producers and the grape headed slowly for extinction until Sardinian producer Sella & Mosca stepped in.

Recognizing that the grape was in trouble, the winery made a concerted effort to not only save their old vine plantings of Torbato but also to buttress them with new plantings.  They claim to be the only winery on earth growing Torbato and making wines from it, and they might be right.  Sella & Mosca's origin story for Torbato has it that it is ultimately from "the Aegean," which I'm assuming means Greece, and that it was taken from there to the coast of southern Spain by the Phoenicians before being taken from Spain to Sardinia by the Spanish a few hundred years down the line.  They seem to be the only ones making a claim for an ultimate Greek origin for Torbato, and they do so without giving any kind of evidence, so I'm going to take it with a fairly substantial grain of salt.  Sella & Mosca's vineyards are within the Algehro DOC which is located around the town of Alghero in the northwest corner of Sardinia.  The Alghero DOC allows a variety of different grapes, including Torbato, and merely stipulates that any wine labeled varietally must contain at least 85% of the stated variety.

Sella & Mosca offers a handful of different Torbato wines, including a sparkling Torbato, but the one that I was able to find was the 100% Torbato "Terre Bianche," which is named for the white limestone soil that the grape is planted on.  I picked up a bottle of the 2009 "Terre Bianche" from my friends at Brookline Liquor Mart for about $22.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep lemon gold color.  The nose was reserved with aromas of red apples, pear and pineapple fruit along with something a bit nutty and a trace of vanilla (about 30% of the juice is aged in older oak barrels for four months).  Some people say that Torbato has a characteristic smoky aroma and flavor, but I didn't really get any of that.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of lemon, green apple, ripe apple and pear fruit with a hint of toasted almonds and a chalky finish.  Overall it was tart and zippy with just a hint of oak to it, but not much.  It was a nice wine, but is difficult to justify at over $20 a bottle.  Rarity has its price, I suppose.

Monica - Sardinia, Italy

Insularity is an interesting phenomenon.  We usually consider a group to be insular when they're tightly-knit and close with one another while being suspicious and closed minded about people and ideas that come from outside of their group.  Generally speaking, insularity is a bad thing since, at its worst, it promotes intolerance and distrust (think of cults or hate groups like Westboro Baptist Church).  Insularity is typically a result of some kind of isolation and for most of the groups that we negatively associate insularity with, ideological isolation is the root cause.  Ideological isolation typically occurs when a group shares a set of beliefs that is radically out of step with the culture they share a geographical proximity with (or are located within).  This proximity is key as insularity becomes a kind of defense mechanism to keep the ideologies of the group intact against the constant threat of other nearby groups or prevalent ideas within the community at large that are threatening to that group's own ideological base.  These constant threats can create aggression as the group seeks to protect their own beliefs through attack.  When you believe that you are surrounded and under attack, it often seems like the best defense is to come out firing.

But insularity isn't necessarily all bad.  In its more benign forms, insularity can act as a preservative for unique and interesting ideas or ways of life.  For this type of insularity, geographical isolation is the driving force.  Geographically isolated communities become insular by virtue of their distance from other groups and cultures which allows them to carry on their own traditions without much threat from outside forces or influences.  Rather than aggression, provincialism or parochialism seem to be the biggest drawbacks to insular communities formed in geographical isolation.

All of which leads us to Sardinia, which is literally insular, as the primary meaning of insular is "of, pertaining to, or resembling an island or islands."  Sardinia is located a little over 100 miles off the western coast of Italy, though it is less than ten miles from the French island of Corsica to its north.  Though it is surrounded by water today, millions of years ago it was connected to the mainland of Italy by a series of isthmuses.  It has been occupied by a laundry list of foreign powers, but never really been conquered.  The interior of the island is very hilly and most locals are content to farm and shepherd there.  Most occupiers were almost certainly more interested in Sardinia as a naval base and since the coastline was never a big part of Sardinian life, for the most part, it seems, each side let the other be.

Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea behind Sicily.  Like Sicily, Sardinia has its own local dialect called Sardo that may as well be a language unto itself.  Unlike Sicily, though, wine production in Sardinia is not that high.  Sicily tends to be near the top of Italian regions in terms of production and is responsible for about one-sixth of Italy's total output.  Sardinia, on the other hand, only produces about two percent of Italy's total (which amounts to only about 10% of Sicily's total) even though it is its third largest region by area.  The dominant agricultural crop in Sardinia was grain for many years and the focus on viticulture has really come around only in the last 60 years or so.  Wine has been made here for a long time, but for many years it was sweet and fortified wine, since their location made it necessary for them to produce wine that could survive travel well.  The focus on table wines for external markets is a very new phenomenon here, taking off really around the late 1970's.

Sardinia has a wealth of native grape varieties that aren't grown anywhere else on earth (part of geographical insularity and isolation is an abundance of unique native species, as any student of Darwin can tell you).  We'll get around to some of them (like Nuragus and Torbato) in later posts, but the grape in question today is the Monica grape.  Monica is native to Spain though it is seldom grown there today.  Conquistadors from Spain arrived in Sardinia around the 13th Century and hung around for awhile.  During their occupation many grape varieties were brought over from mainland Spain including Carignano (Carignan in France), Cannonau (Garnacha in Spain and Grenache in France), Monica and Bovale which is primarily a blending grape.  Monica is widely grown on the southern half of the island, especially around the port town of Cagliari (pictured above) on the southern coast of Sardinia where it has its own small DOC area (there is a larger Monica di Sardegna DOC that covers the entire island as well).

If you are able to find Monica on American shelves, it is likely the bottling from Argiolas called Perdera.  I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2008 vintage of this for around $13.  This bottling is mostly Monica with some Bovale and Carignano making up the remaining portion.  I had thought that the blend was 90/5/5, but this is bottled as an IGT rather than a DOC, and the only explanation I can think of is that there is less than 85% Monica in the bottle, which is the minimum for the DOC classification.  If you go to the Argiolas website and read their factsheet, the wine is listed as a Monica di Sardegna DOC and a Google image search for the label seems to be split 50/50 between the two designations.  I would guess that depending on how their crops do, they have to adjust the blend from year to year and hope they can use at least 85% Monica.  The IGT listed is Isola dei Nuraghi which is a catch-all designation covering all of Sardinia.  The Nuraghi mentioned in the IGT name are ancient stone tower-fortresses that can be found all over Sardinia (there are over 7,000 of them).

In any case, the wine had a medium purplish-ruby color in the glass with aromas of stewed cherries and raspberries with a kind of musty, damp earth undertone.  It was on the lighter side of medium bodied with low tannins and medium plus acidity with tart cherry and stewed red fruit flavors.  It had some dusky chocolate and earth wet earth flavors and bit of a bitter cranberry tang to it on the finish.  This is definitely more on the Pinot Noir end of the spectrum than the Cabernet or Syrah end in terms of body and structure.  It's a simple, easy going light red wine that, like so many Italian wines, really seems to want some food to go with it.  Anything with tomatoes would be great here, as would some lighter meat dishes like turkey burgers or lean meatballs.