The history of the oldest wine estate on Sardinia starts in Piemonte, in the very north of Italy, in the town of Biella.
Sella & Mosca grafting room c 1905, courtesy of Fondazione Sella
For generations, the Sella family had been running a successful business as manufacturers of woollen cloth in Biella. The family also owned vineyards in Bramaterra and Lessona acquired by Comino Sella in 1671 when he invested in what is now known as Tenute Sella, one of Alto Piemonte’s most historic estates, a sleeping beauty which only recently has been kissed awake, if only hesitantly.
When Giuseppe Venanzio Sella, the actual owner of Sella, died in 1876, his oldest son Carlo inherited the business. This left the other three siblings, Gaudenzio, Vittorio and Erminio, with the choice of working under their brother or starting their own activity. Their refusal to play second fiddle triggered the foundation of one of Italy’s most audacious viticultural enterprises ever. While all three went different ways, their separate roads would ultimately converge on Sardinia.
In 1886 Gaudenzio founded Banca Sella & Co, which still trades as Banca Sella. It was to play a key role in financing the adventure the Sellas were to embark on on Sardinia. Vittorio followed his passion for alpinism and photography and was hired by the Duke of the Abruzzi as his official photographer on his expeditions to, among others destinations, the Himalayas.
Erminio Sella, the third brother left out of the Sella cloth heritage, first studied engineering in Turin. In 1898 at the age of 33 he embarked on a gold-prospecting expedition to Alaska he had organised with his brother-in-law Edgardo Gaia. Shipwrecked, the expedition failed, with the death of 36 people, including Gaia.
On his return to Europe, Erminio went to Sardinia to see his lifelong friend Marchese Agostino Zoagli, owner of a large property in the subregion of Nurra near Alghero. Confronted by the wild and untouched place, Erminio fell in love, and before returning home acquired 45 ha (111 acres) of meadows and scrubland just north of Alghero. The foundation of what was to become Sella & Mosca had been laid.
Once back in Biella, Erminio and his brother Vittorio’s brother-in-law, Edgardo Mosca Riatel, devised the ingenious plan of starting a vine nursery on Sardinia. Large parts of the vineyards had been destroyed by phylloxera and they took advantage of the latest scientific research on combating the disease using American rootstocks. Before phylloxera hit Sardinia at the end of the 19th century, it had 80,000 ha (197,684 acres) of vines that turned out 1.2 million hl (31.7 million gal) of wine.
To assess the viability of their plans, Mosca sought advice from leading viticultural experts at the faculty of viticulture at the University of Montpellier. Under the faculty’s supervision, Mosca selected rootstocks and varieties that were expected to do well in the Sardinian climate and soils.
At roughly the same time, Sella visited the Franz Richter nursery near Montpellier. Richter was to become world famous for his crossing of two species of American vines, Vitis berlandieri and Vitis rupestris, to breed new rootstocks such as 110 Richter and 99 Richter. Sella bought 35,000 plants: 27,000 Rupestris du Lot and riparia-rupestrisrootstocks onto which European vines were to be grafted, and another 8,000 American vines to establish a nursery for the production of American rootstocks.
The first vineyards were planted in 1901. Realising the potential of the project, Vittorio travelled to Sardinia, where he acquired a 600-ha (1,483-acre) plot of Mediterranean scrubland and marshland, including 100 sheep, in an area called Planos de Sotzu, which later became known as I Piani. The acquisition was bankrolled by Banca Sella.
The first few years of Sella & Mosca on Sardinia were characterised by frenetic activity to overcome obstacles such as the complete absence of infrastructure and the uncertainty as to whether the varieties would take root. In their effort to turn a swamp into arable land, all three brothers succumbed to malaria.
Before long, Sella & Mosca were able to produce and sell all kinds of grafted vines, both indigenous and international, and cuttings of wild vines, which could be used to make newcrosses. A catalogue from 1905 offers an astonishing 1,607 varieties: European vines grafted onto American rootstocks.
At that time the estate comprised around 200 ha (494 acres) with vast plots of American vines, most of them hybrids for the production of rootstocks, as well as vineyards planted with Monica, Torbato and Cannonau and French imports such as Clairette and Carignan and large fields dedicated to wheat. It was at that time that the first concrete irrigation canals were built.
Between the two world wars, the total Sella & Mosca vineyard area grew to 350 ha (865 acres): 70 ha were planted with American varieties and hybrids, while all other agricultural production was abandoned in favour of the vine nursery and the production of their own wine.
Not long before his death in 1961, Mosca appointed the very young Mario Consorte, who had just obtained a degree in oenology at the Instituto di Viticoltura ed Enologia di Conegliano. Under Consorte’s guidance, a huge programme of renovation and innovation began with the introduction of stainless-steel tanks and Guyot-trainedvineyards. From that moment on, Sella & Mosca focused exclusively on the production of wine, forsaking the vine nursery.
At the beginning of the 1970s, Sella & Mosca decided to go public as a limited company to raise the money needed to completely overhaul the cellar, drill a new well to increase irrigation in dry years, and fund the constant marketing effort needed to make the wines known beyond the island. Gruppo Bassetti acquired 90% of the shares.
However, in the second half of the 1970s, Gruppo Bassetti decided to throw in the towel because of the huge amount of funding needed by the estate. Gruppo Bonomi (Carlo Bonomi was Piero Bassetti’s brother-in-law) became the main shareholder. With new capital and under new ownership, in the 1990s Sella & Mosca acquired La Zedda Pira, a historic Sardinian producer of myrtle liqueur, for which a new cellar was built.
In 2002, Bonomi, needing to refinance its own business, sold Sella & Mosca to Campari, which had at the same time acquired the Vernaccia di San Gimignano estate Terruzi & Puthod, including 100 ha of vines. It was Campari which introduced the whimsical and later obsolete cordone libero mobilizzato (a type of cordon loosely trained on movable wires) to make mechanical pruning and harvesting possible, all in an effort to imitate the efficiency and mechanisation of New World vineyards.
However, the distillate and liqueur giant, which had made an error in thinking of Sella & Mosca as just another brand, was unable to align wine production with its alcoholic beverages. What it failed to understand was the fundamental difference between making a water-based alcoholic drink such as Campari that consists of water, alcohol, flavour and colour, and making wine. The latter is subject to uncontrollable events, such as the weather, which can have a fundamental effect on yield and profitability.
The Campari period led to a slow decline, which was halted when Campari sold its wine portfolio, including Sella & Mosca, to Gruppo Moretti in 2017 for a reported €50 million. Gruppo Moretti, a construction group that specialises in building wine cellars, already owned the Franciacorta estate Bellavista. They concentrated their wine division in a single holding company called Terra Moretti, which, in addition to Sella & Mosca and Teruzzi (as it is now known), includes Contadi Castaldi in Franciacorta and Petra and Acquagiusta in the Maremma in Tuscany.
Under the new ownership of the Gruppo Moretti, Sella & Mosca is entering a new phase in its long history. I hope that the new owners will realise that Sella & Mosca doesn’t belong to a sole proprietor but is part of the fabric of Italy’s vinous history, in which it has played a leading role for more than 120 years.
Much more detail and a wealth of photos can be found in the following historical accounts, which, sadly, are only in Italian:
Nino Monti, Mario Consorte. In Vino Veritas: Storia di Sella & Mosca di Alghero (2019, Carlo Delfinore), Cagliari.
Vittorio Sella. Piccola Storia Familiale della Sella & Mosca (1999, Carlo Delfinore), Cagliari.
This article was previously published at www.JancisRobinson.com on 19 September 2023 and republished with kind permission.
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