What is the Real Mamoiada?
- walterspeller
- 2 days ago
- 28 min read
Previously published under the title Mamoiada – the apex of Grenache in Italy on www.JancisRobinson.com, this is the unedited version. And it is long...
A village with an ancient wine culture tries to come to grips with a challenging, but potentially bright future. While a young generation takes its inspiration from Burgundy, the traditionalists cling to the historic wine style. Both are thread of the same cloth, but stylistic differences and ideas of how to conceive Mamoiada’s future have led to two separate camps.
One of Grenache’s finest and most complex expressions outside of France and Spain comes from Mamoiada, a small, secluded village tucked away in the mountains of Central Sardegna.
Mamoiada is situated in the vast mountainous region of Barbagià on the slopes of the Massif of the Gennargentu, within which borders also Mandrolisai lies.
Just like Mandrolisai, which I reported last year on, Mamoiada fascinates me because of its many old vines and its high-altitude vineyards on between 650 and 900m asl. Its wines, at least the few that I tasted in the past, I remembered as strong, deeply coloured and tannic.
That impression I had to adjust last June after I had set just one foot in the town of 2500 souls, 250 domestic wine cellars and 40 producers who bottle their wines commercially. In 2015, 70 of them, including grape growers, had banded together to found Mamojà, an association for the promotion of the Mamoiada wines and its culture, which is literally thousands of years old.
Immediately after my arrival at six o’clock in the evening Giovanni Ladu, Mamojà’s current 30-something president, ushered me into a room of a local trattoria where the tasting of 50 wines of 25 of the associated producers was going to be held. The AC rumbled in a losing battle against the hot Scirocco wind outside, that carried so much Sahara sand it turned the region’s sky a hazy yellow-grey for the entire three days I was there. (A producer told me later that in 2019 an extremely hot scirocco wind caused for such fast sugar accumulation in the Cannonau berries the potential alcohol went up by more than 1% in a single day).
The temperature in the room rose further because of two dozen producers who poured into the room wanting to see me taste their wines. What followed was a race against the clock, before the wines would become too warm. When I emerged three hours later, also my idea of Cannonau had changed, from anodyne and fruity with lots of alcohol and sweet fruit, to that of a finely-tuned transmitter of origin.
While slurping and spitting my way through the wines, roughly two styles emerged: on the one hand, full-bodied, deep wines with lots of dark fruit and on the other, a paler wine with both more subtle fruit and tannins. The communal thread running through both styles is their plentiful acidity and minerally core. Their difference can be described as old school v new school, or, perhaps better, as a clear generational shift. And the Mamojà association is the missing link between these two different approaches.
Putting Mamoiada on the map
The Mamoiada vineyards are an intricate mosaic of small plots, and Cannonau, as Grenache is called in Sardinia, is trained here ad albarello or bush vines, many of which are over 100 years old. For centuries they have been tended organically and the wines fermented spontaneously. While arguments are going back and forth whether Cannonau/Grenache originates from Sardinia or Spain, Mamoiada is without a doubt Italy’s epicentre of the grape where, qualitatively speaking, it reaches higher heights than anywhere else - in Sardinia or Italy, for that matter.
But Mamoiada faces a dilemma: the whole of the island, the second largest in the Mediterranean, was made DOC Cannonau di Sardegna in 1972, triggering a rush of plantings throughout the island. What might have looked like a cunning marketing plan by connecting a single grape variety with an island famous to the outside world for its beaches, in actual fact became a huge obstacle in recognising regional differences the finely-tuned Cannonau is capable of expressing. This legal drive for uniformity went so far that the word Cannonau on labels of wines that are not DOC Sardegna became strictly forbidden.
Within this enormous DOC there is a designated classico zone, comprising of the provinces of Nuoro and Ogliastra, an area not exactly small by any stretch of the imagination, and three subzones: the much smaller Oliena or Nepente di Oliena immediately southeast of Nuoro, but not exactly known for quality, Capo Ferrata comprising the southeast corner of the island and Jerzù, a small region within the Ogliastra area and which owes its very existence to the large co-op of Jerzù here, which recently has begun to turn a qualitative corner with its Cannonau by designating its own single vineyards and bottling them separately.
Mamojà – the turning point
From the very beginning this generic branding of Cannonau di Sardegna has completely ignored the historic epicentre of Cannonau, Mamoiada, which suggests that DOC Cannonau di Sardegna was a politically motivated creation to accommodate the handful of large and very large Sardinian players.
Because Mamoiada falls under the undiscerning Cannonau di Sardegna DOC, the Mamoiadini had to think hard and long on how to distinguish their wine on the label from a sea of Cannonau di Sardegna. It triggered the foundation of Mamojà with its own, much stricter disciplinary, with spontaneous fermentation and the use of grapes grown in Mamoiada only, obligatory.
At first, the association completely focused on getting its own DOC authorised, but this arduous and long-winding bureaucratic path demanded an interim solution. The first part of which was to use the IGT Barbargia, a lowly IGT but so small it is confined to the region around Mamoiada only.
‘The initial project was to create DOC Mamoiada but it is bureaucratic slog,’ Federica Dessolis, one of Mamoiada’s youngest producers and poster girl for a new dynamic the region is experiencing, told me last June while driving me up to her vineyards in the north in her battered Fiat, in an area called Loreto. Named after the pale red pained church, the Chiesa Campestre Loret’ Attesu, as far as the eye can see it is hills, wheatfields and old bush vines overlooked by the majestic Massiccio del Gennargentu mountain range. ‘DOC Cannonau di Sardegna is too generic and hence lots of us voluntarily declassify to this IGT. The irony is that Cannonau di Sardegna has the size of an IGT, while IGT Barbagia is so small it is de facto a DOC,’ is how Dessolis pointed out the anomaly.
The second part of the interim solution was the introduction of the so called Ghirada.
Ghiradas can best be described as a vineyard area analogous to Etna’s contrada. Historically in Mamoiada every vineyard area was vinified separately. ‘Their names are toponyms we took off military maps’ Federica Dessolis told me. One of her vineyards is adjacent to the Chiesa Campestre Loret’ Attesu, which gives the Ghirada its name, S Loreto, the others in the Ghirada of Gauranele, further north.
While the Ghirada concept is easy enough to understand, this year the association produced its first map visualising them. Looking at its execution it becomes abundantly clear that Masnaghetti was the inspiration, but this very rudimentary map, tellingly called ‘Cartina Territoriale’, or territorial map, is Mamojà’s first big step in delineating what could become the future DOC.
The map divides the area into six subzones: Zona Nord, Zona Nord Est (northeast), Zona Est (east), Zona Sud (south), Zona Sud Ovest (southwest) and Zona Nord Ovest (northwest). The soils predominantly consist of granite with a high rock content with the occasional clay component.
So far, the Ghiradas haven’t been officially registered, which would only be possible as a trademark anyway, because plans to push for a DOC have been laid on ice due to conflicting opinions between the Mamoiada producers of the perceived benefits. In the meantime, the Ghirada name on the label, in combination with the Mamojà logo, has to act as DOC Mamoiada avant-la-lettre, also because quite a few producers continue to label their wines under the easy-to-recognise DOC Cannonau di Sardegna rather than Barbagià.
Interestingly, most wines are bottled in burgundy-shaped bottles.’ The idea was to have a uniform presence to express the style and origin of the wine,’ Dessolis explained. Turns out that Dessolis has quite a lot of first-hand experience in this French region.
Federica Dessolis - from Mamoiada to Burgundy and back
After having studied viticulture and oenology in Oristano, Dessolis decided she wanted to do a vintage in the Loire. ‘I left with the idea of coming back, but not knowing when. The vineyards didn’t give a viable return and my father and brother, who tended them, did other work.’
A year at Vincent Girardin in Meursault, Burgundy, followed. ‘I wanted to know how they tend their vines,’ is how Dessolis described this period. Between 2019 and 2021 she studied viticulture at the University of Dijon, while doing a stage between July and December at Domaine Romanée Conti each year she was enrolled.
Dessolis owns two ha in the Zona Nord Est. ‘Contrary to what you’d believe the northeast zone is actually the hottest, because it has a full south exposition,’ Dessolis explained. ‘Once the area was highly prized, because of the enormous sugar accumulation resulting in high alcohol, and the clay component in the granite soils giving firm tannins. At that time these were signs of high quality.’
At the end of her studies in France while doing a final stage in Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Dessolis noticed that the Burgundians were always fretting about the exact right moment to harvest, while in Chateauneuf-du-Pape they were less worried about the alcohol level. Dessolis immediately saw a parallel with Mamoiada, but with the latter being more extreme. For her first Mamoiada vintage in 2021, while she was still in Chateauneuf-du-Pape, she told her father and brother over the telephone to harvest earlier than they were used to in order to reduce potential alcohol.
Since then, Dessolis has tried to mitigate the tannic impact and bring the alcohol levels in her wines down. Ruggero Mazzili, a biodynamic consultant viticulturist who consults the Mamojà producers, suggested interrow plantings of herbs and wheat to reduce the vines’s vigour. They also try to increase overall yield, which is not as easy as it sounds because the old vines produce uneconomically low yields to begin with. She and Mazzili managed to increase yields from 30 to 35-40 quintals by pruning less severely and leaving more buds on the shoots.
Dessolis has plans to plant the adjacent west-facing plot with Cannonau, which, according to her, will help to mitigate tannins. She also noticed that prolonged bottle age helps in settling the tannins, a measure that will have to wait, until cashflow becomes less of a priority.
Her first ever vintage, 2021, as Cantine Esole, Dessolis labelled Ghirada Garaunele – A - Essay. ‘Essay stands for trial – for me it was an experiment.’ Compared with the 2023 cask samples I tasted with Dessolis, this wine is a very dark crimson compared with the striking paleness of her current vintages from bottle and cask. ‘[in 2021] I destemmed and crushed, and because you tear the skins you extract much more colour.’ From that vintage on she began with partial whole-bunch fermentation while the rest of the bunches were destemmed but the berries left whole, which resulted in a lighter colour and more elegant palate.
Dessolis ferments in food grated plastic bins. The fruit is punched down by hand three times a day, until the fermentation starts. Once it has begun, she foot stomps. In 2021 she fermented 30% of the fruit whole-bunch, which in 2023 crept up to 50%. “Whole bunch fermentation is not our tradition, but ever since I had been in Burgundy, I wanted to do this, but I am unsure if I will continue. Unfortunately, you only get the chance to experiment once a year.’ She ages her wine in a 20hl large French oak cask which rather than having been toasted was only treated with hot vapour.
Under the Esole label Dessolis makes the aforementioned Ghirada Garaunele A, a 100% Cannonau from her old vines planted by her grandfather Antonio, hence the A. A second wine, Ghirada Garaunele B, made of the young vines planted by her father and hence B will be produced as soon as the vineyard comes on stream.
Her stunning white, the Ghirada Garaunele -Sa Panada, is a 100% Granatza spontaneously fermented in a three year old 600l tonneaux of French oak by Vicard. Dessolis doesn’t’ use battonage: ‘I work on freshness rather than creaminess. We try to make wines we like ourselves.’
The recently rediscovered Granatza has created quite a buzz in Mamoiada. Once interplanted in the Cannonau vineyards, on its own it is capable of making finely-textured, complex whites with linear acidity and, in the right hands, even has affinity with small oak barrels.
In 2024 Agris Sardegna, the Sardinian regional institute for scientific research, experimentation and technological innovation in the agricultural sector, which also includes viticulture, officially included Granatza in its register of authorised grape varieties. Confusingly, the Italian National Register of Grape Varieties, officially recognises Granatza as a synonym of Guarnaccia Bianca, while GRAPES indicates that Guarnaccia is a synonym of Coda di Volpe, which is cultivated in Calabria and Campania but not in Sardinia. Hence there is a case for recognising Granazza as a distinct variety.
Before it was officially authorised as a grape variety for the production of wine, it was spelled as ‘Granazza’, and a fantasy name in order to circumvent the law that doesn’t allow for unauthorised grape varieties to be written on the label nor commercially sold.
Dessolis told me that there is still very little Granatza around and whoever is interested in it propagates it from old vines, which is then multiplied by a local nursery, but this takes time. Quantities are still so small that some cannot even fill an entire tank (most of Granatza is fermented in stainless steel) and hence this can cause for premature oxidation. Because of this she ferments her Granatza in small oak barrels, but that is not the only reason. ‘On the basis of my experience in Burgundy I wanted a white wine with more complexity.’ The results are so astonishing that her partner Simone Desilesu, of whom more below, and who until then fermented his Granatza in stainless, steel has switched to oak, and with impressive results.
She also poured me the 2020 vintage, the very last one made by her father, before she took over. It was bottled and labelled by the Mamojà association. It began to buy up and bottle wine in order to encourage producers who didn’t yet bottle their wine to do so. ‘This has 15.5% [on the label], but probably 16%,’ Dessolis commented on her father’s wine. ‘I have tasted other things, and my taste is different and I prefer wines that are “lighter.” Until very recently a good wine was considered to be concentrated, with lots of structure and alcohol. That idea is now slowly changing. At first my father thought my wines were too light, but now he confesses that he has difficulty drinking his own.’
Vike Vike - the road to Mamoiada via Stellenbosch
A continuation of Dessolis’s diverging approach from ‘classic’ Maoiada, triggered by her inquisitive mind and experience abroad, can be found at Vike Vike, a small estate run by her partner Simone Sedilesu, son of Francesco Sedilesu, who, a decade earlier rescinded the management of Mamoiada’s largest winery, Giuseppe Sedilesu, that he shared with his brother and sister, a decision seemingly triggered by observing a younger generation going in a different direction.
While dating Dessolis, Simone visited her in Burgundy. It is there he noticed that at dinner locals easily drank two bottles of wine rather than one, like in Mamoiada. ‘The obstacle is that [in Mamoiada] they drink their own wine only and they prefer big wines,’ is how Sedilesu described the cultural difference. But even for a Mamoiadino one bottle is more than enough.
Just like Dessolis, Sedilesu studied oenology and viticulture in Oristano and graduated in 2014. By chance he then ended up at Neil Ellis in Stellenbosch, South Africa. ‘The owner of Decameron [a famous restaurant in Stellenbosch] is from Mamoiada and he asked around if anyone wanted to go to South Africa, Sedilesu told me. ‘He suggested I should go to Stellenbosch. I said: “do they have vineyards in South Africa?” I was completely ignorant.’
There were three different openings, of which Sedilesu picked Neil Ellis, because of a Grenache vineyard there on 350m asl, some 34 km outside from Stellenbosch. ‘The grapes were chilled with dry ice and transported back to Stellenbosch. The heat and humidity is like a slap in the face and everything has to be airconditioned. The way they make wine robs it from its poetry, but I would do it ten times over again,’ is how Sedilesu summed up this life-changing experience.
When Sedilesu returned to Mamoiada in 2015 everything had changed. His father had handed over the Giuseppe Sedilesu estate to his brother Salvatore, and had set up a new outfit, Teularju, in the Ghirada Teulargiu in the northeast zone (the toponym cannot be used to name an estate for legal reasons).
‘[in 2001] It was my father, who built the cellar because his father [Giuseppe] had vineyards, but no great ambition to make and bottle his own wine. My father drew in his brother [Salvatore, the current owner] and his sister and this allowed to produce a large number of bottles and the livelihood for three families. My father foresaw the problems of inheritance that three sibling and between them 13 children would bring. In 2015 he bought 8ha of vineyards w and set up Teularju.’
Initially Simone was shocked: ‘I grew up with my cousins here in the countryside, but my father told me that one needs to be dynamic. After Stellenbosch he also wanted me to go to France to Chateauneuf-du-Pape.’
It didn’t happen and neither did Simone return to the family fold. Instead, he found a vineyard in Mamoiada’s south in the Ghirada Fittiloghe that was never considered a great zone, because due to its cooler macro climate compared with the Ghirade in the north, the wines were less concentrated and tannic, and hence not taken seriously. Simone saw the vineyard and immediately wanted it for exactly these reasons. Consequently, he founded Vike Vike, meaning ‘surprise, surprise’ in local dialect. The first wine, the 2019 Ghirada Frittiloghe changed his life again: ‘I immediately found importers.’
Curiously, Simone labels his wine under DOC Cannonau di Sardegna rather than IGT Barbagia. It came as a surprise to me, because I had expected that the new generation would want to increase their visibility and hence their economic prospects by pushing for a more precise designation, a process they had begun by taking ownership of what is otherwise a small and unknown IGT, but one that would put the spotlights on Mamoiada.
With closed ranks between producers and the continuous promotion by the Mamojà association, the elevation to DOC would have been impossible to be ignored politically. And it is exactly at this point opinions have begun to differ within Mamojà. ‘There was the idea of DOC Mamoiada, but it was abandoned because there were fears it would attract the attention of big investors,’ Simone told me. With the influx of money inevitably would come change, bringing prosperity and creating a future for the next generation, who until now, seeing no perspective, tend to move to the cities or the north of Italy. At the same time, it would endanger the tightly-knit Mamoiada fabric and its ancient traditions.
The question, at least to me is, whether this development can be stopped. Due to global warming, Sardinian players from outside Mamoiada have already taken note of the high-altitude vineyards, and at least one of the biggest regularly buys Cannonau grapes here to freshen their own wines produced from grapes in the hot plains. Isn’t it just a question of time before someone makes an offer that simply cannot be refused and a mamoiadino sells their vineyards?
Tradition triggering renewal
While Simone started his own Vike Vike estate upon his return from Stellenbosch, his father, who until 2015 was running the Giuseppe Sedilesu estate, went through a transition himself: ‘When running Giuseppe Sedilesu, my father was convinced that he made traditional wines from old vines. But then he started drinking burgundy and he completely changed. I don’t know, but he must have spent a fortune on these wines.’
Francesco Sedilesu is a quiet man who in the company of his daughter piled me in his car and drove me up to his magnificent vineyard in the northeast of Mamoiada he acquired in 2016 in an area called Teulargiu, after which, with a slight modification to avoid legal challenges, called his estate. This piece of land, on 700m asl, and which Francesco acquired from an aunt, is one of very few vineyards around here. ‘In the past this area was considered meno vocato(unsuitable) for vines because it was too cool.’ An historic disadvantage that now has become incredibly valuable.
The 8ha of Cannonau vines is a single plot, which has been planted according to alberello alta controspalliera, an elevated bush vine trained on wires. The classic training system in Mamojada has always been was alberello basso libero, or freestanding low bush vine, until the controspalliera began to make its way into vineyards with the introduction of mechanisation. Because grape growing here was and still is a side activity, this training system was wholeheartedly embraced because it was time saving.
‘We [in Mamoiada] have always used alberello, but now in a form adapted to mechanisation,’ Francesco explained. ‘We tried other training systems, such as guyot, but the quality was not the same.’ According to him this has to do with the fact that the angle of shoots from the branch of guyot is 90 degrees, whereas with this adapted form of albarello the angle is 45 degrees and hence the lymph flow is more natural.
While replanting the vineyard Francesco decided against any form of flurbereinigung, the restructuring of soils taking out stones and rocks to make access with machinery easier and creating terraces for the same reason. The soils have been literally left untouched, and the rows of vines seem to flow through the landscape, planted around rocks wherever possible.
The eight ha of vines is divided in four Ghirade: 2 ha in the Ghirada Ocruarana with a north to northwest exposition on sand and granite interspersed with a green, metamorphic stone, called Ocruarana, after which the Ghirada is named; 2.7ha in the Ghirada Erula, again with a northwest exposition and sandy soils with a high rock content and named after the Ferula asafoetida plant, called Erula in local dialect, which can be found here in abundance; 2.3ha in the Ghirada Rizza on a steep slope, with sandy and clay soils with a high rock content, and 1ha in Cara’Gonare, with a south-west exposition with clay soils high in organic matter and rocks in its steepest parts.
Francesco’s winemaking is classic Mamoiada with spontaneous fermentation and ageing in large oak cask only, but there any similarity ends. The first few vintages of Teularju that have recently arrived on the market are stylistically more akin to Esole and Vike Vike, which it shares its precision and elegance with, and seemingly diametrically opposed to the Giuseppe Sedilesu estate’s traditional style of big, deep wines matched by lots of tannins and high in acidity, while often clocking up 15% and more.
What brought this stylistic radical change I wanted to know. ‘Giovanni [his son] is much more radical than me,’ Francesco hesitantly offered. Apparently travel changed his mind, but that was all Francesco had to say about this fundamental chance, which also led to his u-turn on campaigning for a DOC Mamoiada. After visiting the Giuseppe Sedilesu estate a clearer picture of his reason started to emerge.
Later that same day I met Salvatore Sedilesu, now running Giuseppe Desilesu after Francesco parted the company to start Teularju. Giuseppe Sedilesu turns out over 100,000 bottles, and is by far the biggest player of Mamoiada, while labelling all of its Cannonaus as Cannonau di Sardegna DOC, except two. Ghirada Zi’Spanu and Ghirada Murruzzone are new labels, created by Salvatore’s 20-something son, Andrea, who now has become the oenologist of the estate after Francesco left. These wines, together with three Granatzas all labelled IGT Barbagià, are evidence that also here a generational shift has begun.
Giuseppe Sedilesu bought his first plot of vines in 1980, and slowly began to acquire more and more vineyards. The grapes were used to make sfuso, bulk wine, a part-time activity for Giuseppe who was holding down a day job. ‘My father bought his first vineyard at the time of the extirpation subsidies coming from Brussels, and of which many in Mamoiada took advantage,’ Salvatore told me.
‘My father always said: “I don’t want a holiday, I want to work.’ So he kept on buying while sometimes being offered land by owners, whose children had moved to the city,’ Salvatore explained, adding: ‘to work the vineyards here was historically a question of honour. The new generation is not used to thinking this way.’ But I suspect that the hardship of making a living tending vines plays at least as big a role as to why a younger generation is turning their backs on the vineyards.
At the end of the 1950s the local cantina sociale, or co-op was founded in an effort to sustain grape growers by producing bulk wine of which a small quantity was bottled and sold at higher prices. Due to mismanagement the co-op went bankrupt, but also, according to Salvatore, due to the fact that grape growers didn’t want to sell all of their grapes, much preferring to continue their culture of making and drinking wine while sharing it with others.
Over the years its demise however did trigger the trend for many grape growers to partially bottle their own produce. But none of them were as ambitious as Francesco Sedilesu, who in 2001 took the initiative to build a very large cellar, at least to Mamoiada’s standards with its 200 ‘garagisti’, the majority producing wine for home consumption only. With now some 20ha the estate also bottles contracted fruit, which helps towards sustaining vineyards here, most of which are tended by grape growers, who combine this while holding down a full-time day job.
While still managing the Giuseppe Sedilesu estate, on Francesco Sedilesu’s initiative, Mamojà was founded. If Salvatore represents the history of the Sedilesu family, Francesco is the schism. A thoughtful man, and not entirely comfortable with speaking to journalists, Francesco skirted the original question why he founded Mamojà to get the DOC Mamoiada officially recognised, but now has been put on ice, something not all members agree with and hence has become controversial.
According to Francesco, the creation of the DOC is impossible because, as he puts it, ‘big players in Sardinia’ are uncooperative, but he failed to explain which mechanisms they have at their disposal to prevent Mamojà to go to Rome with their request. Now that journalists, sommeliers and importers are beating a path to Mamoiada and its centenary vines, the large international exposure the association and the region are experiencing, could be used to forcefully support its claim to DOC status.
Protecting the Mamoiada DNA
Perhaps sensing that his reasoning did not entirely convince, in an email sounding like a cri de coeur sent to me after my visit, Francesco tried to explain his true motivation. ‘Compared to other important denominations we are only at the beginning of our development and we still have lots to do, but we are moving in the right direction, I hope. Our slogan is: developing the region through wine, while respecting the environment and our community. In turn, the community is the wine’s custodian.’
For Francesco the traditional practice of spontaneous fermentation is part of the Mamoiada DNA: ‘whether with lots or little alcohol, we will always immediately recognise our wines among others. This direct connection we have with our wines is not filtered by science or markets, it is still purely in us.’
Francesco sees a direct parallel between certain indigenous tribes. ‘They still preserve archetypes modern mankind has lost. We preserve as a community that of wine, with very few other wine regions in the world. How did we do this, while in the rest of Sardinia this is very rare? You can find signs in some producers but not in an entire community.’
‘We are a village of 2500 souls, and 250 family cellars, of whom 40 bottle, but all ferment spontaneously. Therefore, it is not a sporadic phenomenon, but the norm, like what happens in Burgundy, for as far as I know.’ While I completely follow Francesco’s reasoning, Burgundy seems to have become the stylistic leitfaden – and stylistic schism, that currently is dividing Mamoiada.
Sedilesu described how in 1855 there were a total of 55ha of vines in Mamoiada and according to him, in neighbouring villages, where nowadays viticulture is no longer practiced, much more. ‘When at the beginning of the 20th century phylloxera had destroyed most of the vineyards, only Mamoiada replanted whole swathes of land and in 1954, the year the co-op was founded there were well over 400ha of vineyards.’
‘What must be said is that the wine of the co-op was “the co-op.’” The population didn’t feel it was theirs and wasn’t very proud of it, to the point that my grandfather when he had drunk all his own wine, would say to me: “go and get me five litres of that wine of the co-op. I hope that worse than that is impossible.” To make wine at the co-op, which had been set up by politicians, at a time when we, Mamoiadini, were not ready to run an organisation with lots of responsibility and a single portfolio, grape growers delivered the lowest quality of grapes to the co-op. The oenologist did the rest. Such adulterated rubbish!’
In 1980 the co-op went bust while through the extirpation subsidies at the time Mamoiada lost 200ha. During the following 20 years wine was still produced in Mamoiada if largely for home consumption. The surplus was sold to neighbouring villages, as had happened for centuries. ‘Through the following era of great agricultural industrialisation, and especially that of wine, we managed to conserve this precious practice of making wine at home.’
In 2000, on the initiative of the Sardinian Insitute for Agricultural Development Francesco was employed by, the first bottlings of Mamoiada wines were trialled. ‘We had no doubt that the wine had to be exactly what it had always been, perhaps made with more attention, but absolutely according to its biological matrix. Oenologists,saying that our wine made in this way was too rustic and that the market wouldn’t accept, hadn’t enchanted us and the opposite turned out to be the case.’
Following this trial in 2000, five estates where founded, one of which was Giuseppe Sedilesu, on the initiative of Francesco. 15 years later he founded the Mamojà association. ‘I went around Europe and I saw many estates and wine regions and I was delighted in their beauty. I said to myself: “also Mamojada can be like that.”’
But there was another motive for the creation of Mamojà. It had to be a tool to prevent a young generation to flee the land. ‘Today, Mamojà has 25 associated producers. With 40 producers in total some 600,000 bottled and €6 million invoiced and 200 persons in charge. There isn’t any other commune in Sardinia that has such an extended wine reality. The young people have a strong sense of belonging to this village and it depopulates much less than other villages in Barbagia and the rest of the island.’
Francesco didn’t hide in his mail he doesn’t agree at all with me: ‘you say that investors can improve even more this situation. I don’t believe this at all. They would only do damage: because youngsters will not want to be someone else’s slave under the sun in the vineyard for a meagre salary of a land worker, and will prefer to go elsewhere and move to a city. Youngsters will lose their sense of belonging and the direct relationship between man, vineyard and wine will be completely lost.
With the investors it would be a show development, great for stories in newspapers, and for turnover, but one would lose the immense richness today an enthusiast can find here, still intact like hundreds of years ago: a community and its wine. This will be even more important in the future.’
His doubts about the benefits of pushing for a DOC Mamoiada has almost turned into resentment of the entire system: ‘I have the ambition, that the example of Mamoiada will convince the institutions to create new regulations, not towards consumer protection, as actual DOCs are set up to do and, which in essence, are geared towards the market, its mechanisms which do not support wine, but in the direction of protecting the community and its wine. This would be much better for the world of wine, and as a consequence, for the consumer. One must return to wine, if not our sector will die.’
Ever the cynic, I can’t help but wondering in how far Francesco himself is part of this development in pursuing change by stylistically emulating Burgundy – and, I believe, for commercial reasons. The question here is: what is authentic? Can style change and still be authentic? When strictly following Francesco’s own reasoning, this ‘burgundian’ style is against tradition, and hence not a ‘true’ Mamoiada wine. It is a style that takes its inspiration from elsewhere.
The future
In whatever way you want to look at it, Mamojà as an organisation has been effective in persuading a young generation to stay put with the promise that what is now often a ‘job-on-the-side’ will eventually turn into a full-time, profitable activity. Several of the young generation are on the brink of achieving this.
Incentivised by Mamojà of which he is currently its president and inspired by the new wave wines springing from the scions of the larger Sedilesu family, Giovanni Ladu is perhaps its clearest example. Founded in 2017 when he got hold of his grandfather’s vineyards, Ladu, who is a black smith, and by his own saying, not coming from an agricultural background, wants to make the full-time switch as soon as possible.
While I saw him, he vividly recalled how both his grandfather and father made wine for home consumption. ‘My grandfather made wine. After he died my mother and her sisters inherited the vineyards, but being unable to manage them, they took the extirpation subsidies and pulled out most of the plots and planted it with olive trees instead. As they do not produce much, due to the cool temperature here on 650m asl, Ladu considers replanting the plot with Granatza.
Ladu’s plots, all in the southwest zone in the Ghirada of S’Enna Manna and on granite soils, he replanted in 2008 and 2015. ‘My grandfather used to say, that you do not get great wine from S’Enna Manna, first because the northwest exposure, once considered too cool to ripen grapes properly, and the extreme vigour of the vineyards due to the high humidy because of a nearby stream, which additionally creates high temperature differences between day and night. Before climate change this area was very hard to cultivate. If you look at the map you see that the southwest zone has the least vineyards of all, but now is being re-evaluated.’ Vines here are trained on double cordon, not only to allow for mechanisation (him doing all the work by himself) but also to mitigate vigour.
A second plot he tends for his uncle, who passed away three years ago, is in the east zone in the Ghirada of Sae Bisconte with 80-year old Cannonau vines interplanted with a little Granatza. Ladu tends to harvest the Cannonau at the end of August, because this zone is much warmer than the southeast and due to the age of the vines, yield is extremely low, and with little possibility to increase it significantly in order to get less concentrated grapes. ‘I see it as an historic vineyard and I am grateful for whatever it gives me.’
Ladu also mentions that he cannot harvest earlier because his tiny cellar would still be too hot to ferment without running into problems. Ladu’s production, less than 1500 bottles, he vinifies in a space in his father’s office, which, since he retired, Ladu is busy enlarging by halving the size of the office. Only after he has renovated and enlarged it he can build in air condition. ‘It is als omy third year only with this vineyard while I have 15 years of experience with S’Ena Manna. So lets see where this wine will be in the next 20 years.’
Stylistically Ladu’s wines tend towards the Giuseppe Sedilesu style, while he admits to admire the new wave Mamoiada. Their influence is noticeable by the fruit profile of Ladu’s wines that are in the red rather than dark fruit spectrum, even if they are not shy of alcohol and deeply coloured. His growing awareness for wanting more finesse and less bold tannins in his wines is evident by his wish to increase bottle ageing.
The old vines, however, do limit of what he can do to make lighter wines, although I did not sense a great desire of Ladu to go full ‘New Wave,’ so to speak and neither does his friend, Mattia Muggitu, who continues making classic, hefty Mamoiada wine. Muggitu tends to do late harvests in order to obtain this style of wine, because of the demand. When visitors come to his cellar, they like the lighter style he also tries to produce, but they buy the classic one, which is his best seller.
While both Ladu and Muggitu strive to make their estates their full-time job, they do not seem too worried if it wouldn’t work out, at least not immediately. According to them there is no real threat of widescale vineyard abandonment, because there is still a strong local market. ‘Private people and trattorias throughout the region still buy sfuso (bulk wine), so there continues to be an economic advantage to keep on tending even a snippet of vineyards.’
I asked Ladu why did he stay in Mamoiada. ‘I feel good here. I can travel for a week, but at some stage the vineyards call me back.’
Tradition going forward
Francesco Cadinu is a true traditionalist and with a historic old cellar underneath his house bang in the middle of town to prove it. He still has one of his centenary vineyard worked with an ox by a neighbour. ‘He is now 70 years old and the last one who knows how to do that,’ Cadinu told me. But living in one of only five so-called ‘blue zones’ in the world, areas with a disproportionate high number of over 100-year olds, I don’t think he has to worry too much for the near future.
Some in Mamoiada suggested to me that Cadinu is the one who least wants any change, but in actual fact he is a clear proponent of DOC Mamoiada. Cadinu told me he doesn’t share the idea of the imminent threat Francesco Sedilesu so clearly sees. Cadinu himself labels his wine under the Cannonau di Sardegna DOC. ‘IGT Barbagia no one knows. I think that most of the producers would prefer Cannonau di Sardegna sub zone Mamoiada.’ He believes that elevating Mamoiada to DOC level would give many more part-time grape growers the opportunity to bottle their wine and get a decent return on them.
While being one of the founding members of Mamoià, Cadinu pointed out that all of the associated producers have learned a lot, especially how to come to grips with the high levels of alcohol. ‘We began by increasing yield, but it is not a given, while blending with lighter wines is an option, Cadinu summarised the change. ‘We change, but slowly slowly.’
Tuscan oenologist Emilia Falsini, who has a large list of clients and who just founded his own small estate on Etna, is Ladu’s consultant. ‘Falsini began to talk about how [the international market] is changing towards a lighter style. He told me to pay close attention to the harvest time and pull the date forward.’
One of Cadinu’s oldest vineyards in the northeast zone in the Ghirada Elisi, is called Sa’ e Antoni, after the owner, who planted it 90 years ago. While observing the old vines, Cadinu took cuttings of those, which seemed especially resistant to coulure and fungal attacks. These cuttings will be propagated and used to replace dying vines with in order to keep production on an economically viable level and safeguard the ancient genetic pool.
The plot next to Sa’e Antoni was planted in 1962, and gives little fruit – a bunch per vine as a matter of fact. Cadinu has not choice but to pull it out, eventually that is ‘pian piano’ (slowly slowly), and using only the bets vines to select cuttings from. ‘
That genetic pool is under threat not just by low productive old clones, but also by commercial nurseries that tend to sell the most productive clone, and already standard grafted onto 1103 Paulsen, because of its ease to graft vines on. The graft however is much weaker, Cadinu told me. ‘Our grandfathers used to plant the rootstock first and gave it time to properly develop and only then it was grafted with the vine.’ The old rootstocks are so robust, that even if the old vines die, the rootstock survives and can be grafted over.
In 2022 Cadinu and his wine Simonetta managed to acquire a 100-year old bush vine vineyard in Ghirada Loreto. The yield is a minuscule 15 quintals, and similar in yield to their plot of 120 year old vines in the south zone in Ghirada Fittiluoghi. The vineyard is divided in two plots by a path, the so-called ghiradorju, which gives enough space for an ox and plow to turn at the end of the row.
Despite the tiny yields coming from each plots, total alcohol in the wines never go over 15, and regularly are 14.5%. And yet when tasting Cadinu’s wines they never seem heavy at all due to their amazing balance. These are complex wines coming from a true traditionalist with a penchant for old vines, but one with a clear vision for the future and a strong believe in a possible DOC Mamoiada.
A look at its neighbour Mandrolisai, another haven of centenary vines, but with its own DOC, shows that the elevation didn’t lead to mass sell-out, so Mamoiada should take courage from that. I asked Cadinu that if tiny Mandrolisai was able to get itself elevated to DOC, why would it be more problematic for Mamojada. ‘They say that Mandrolisai had the support of Giacomo Tachis in getting the DOC.’ Endorsement of Italy’s most famous oenologist must have helped, but it also created a precedence Mamoiada could use in getting its point across.
While stylistic divergence from the traditional Mamoiada style has pulled it in a lighter direction, one that by no means is easy to achieve, both ‘traditional’ and ‘new wave’ Mamoiada have their striking balance in common. ‘New wave’ Mamoiada has certainly helped to attract the attention from the outside world, but there is place for both styles.
I would go even further: new wave Mamoiada gets most of its legitimisation because of traditional Mamoiada. And before you think that Mamoiada runs the risk of being ‘burgundy-ised’, Cadinu’s observation is a different one: ‘The [Italian wine] guides love the old style.’ And thinking back of Mattia Muggitu’s words, there are many others that do.
Either way, it is just a question of balance.
The Ghirade – non exhaustive list
Zona Nord – Northern Zone
Foddigheddu
Cara Mala
Berei
Zona Nort-Est – Northeastern Zone
Mulineddu
Tarasunele
Muzzanu
Loret’attesu
Elisi
Garaunele
Malarthana
Zona Est – Eastern Zone
Sa Lahana
Su Piducru
Dighidilisi
Su Pinu
Sos Vidichinzos
Duduli
Su Tutturighe
S’Anestasia
Zona Sud – Southern Zone
Fittiloghe
Bacarru
Gurguruó
Istevene
Su Monte e s’ulmu
Zona Sud Ovest – Southwestern Zone
Su Hastru e su horvu
Sa cucculia
Murruzzone
S’ena Manna
Palagorrai
Conzimu
Basarule
Zona Nord Ovest – Northwestern Zone
Bruncu Boeli
Badu orane
Mulinu
Teularju
Zi’ Spanu
Comments