The Wines

ENTIRELY PRODUCED AND ESTATE-BOTTLED IN THE PRODUCTION FACILITY BY TENUTE DETTORI – SOCIETÀ AGRICOLA SEMPLICE, SENNORI (SASSARI), SARDINIA. ITALY.

Romangia is a great terroir, and even after all these years, Badde Nigolosu remains a mystery to us too. While beautiful, this place is complex, as is tending its vineyards and wines.

Our nine vineyards produce nine wines, which although completely different share important common traits: harmony, elegance, finesse, balance and above all ageability. This is what makes them rare, precious wines, which can hold their head high among the world’s best vineyard selections, neither suffering from presumption on one hand nor from an inferiority complex on the other.

We are winegrowers because we produce wine using only the grapes we ourselves grow.

We are artisans because we personally plan and perform every task required, whether in the rows or the cellar. We don’t need consultants.

Each plot in our Badde Nigolosu vineyard gives a unique wine every year, which bears the name of the plot itself: Dettori Bianco, Tuderi, Tenores, Dettori, Chimbanta, Ottomarzo, and Moscadeddu.

The painstaking attention and dedication given to the vineyards is the same you will find in the cellar.

We never perform chemical analysis on the grapes before harvesting, not wishing to unduly influence our experience and instincts. This is why the alcoholic strength of our wines varies from year to year. We don’t monitor ABV, total acidity or pH value. We’re not interested. We monitor the only thing that matters: balance.

The grapes are harvested by hand and quality-selected on a sorting table, then de-stemmed but not pressed. Maceration takes place in open concrete vats without using starters or sulphites.

The duration of maceration depends on the characteristics of the grapes and the must, and can last from two to ten days. Longer macerations are not traditional. Racking is always done by hand to protect the skin. The must continues its journey in small concrete tanks until bottling. Not all the wine in the tanks will be bottled; some will be downgraded and bottled as Renosu. We are our own worst critics.

We don’t need oak to soften the tannins, thanks to the skilful work done in the vineyard: when the grapes reach the cellar, they already have everything it takes to make a great wine.

We don’t perform filtration, but clarify by means of natural gravity-settling, and the cold winter temperatures in the cellar help the wine to stabilize.
From the grapes of our vineyards to the bottle without the addition of other substances permitted in wine production.
Our ingredients, improvers, and additives are one and the same: grapes.

Our wines should be stored above 10°C, and need rest after transport. Once opened, they should be allowed to breathe for a while. Any presence of sediment or CO2 is natural. The wine should always be drunk cool, both whites and reds at around 13°C. Each bottle must be different. Each bottle is numbered.

This is because we want our wines to represent the essence of our terroir: truthful, real, unique. These are free wines: free to express themselves, and free to fully express their provenance, since they are quite simply fermented grape juice. These wines are not slaves to commercial and marketing concerns. Nor are they designed and artfully packaged for an exclusive market.

WINE AND TERROIR

Winegrowers are the only ones who can leave a mark on the terroir with their daily dedication.
A terroir is born from the fusion of a place and a people. When I say (anthropological) place, I am referring to Augè’s definition: a space that has been marked, occupied, symbolized, and ordered by a society. A terroir is not the child of an individual, but of a community that has also (and above all) lived in a place without being aware of it. A terroir is made up of daily actions for survival, which have been handed down over generations, such as making one’s own bread or producing wine to sell.
Terroir wine is tiring; you need to be persevering, dedicated and uncompromising.

A terroir always needs a winegrower. A terroir is not something we create through wine. Rather, we winegrowers are one of the elements of the terroir: we don’t use a terroir, we put ourselves at its service.

We have never wanted to define our wines on the basis of grape variety, preferring to associate them with the individual plots of Tuderi, Tenores, Dettori, Chimbanta, and the others. The variety is not the dominant factor of terroir.

Wine should be a pure expression of a place, not of a variety, and this leads us to another reflection: a terroir cannot be static. We can perhaps define it as that desire to always strive for something better, which leads people to constantly seek new adaptations of an original motif, in the search for perfect harmony.

But changing everything just because we lack the necessary expertise is unacceptable.

THE GROWING YEAR: EXPERIENCE BUT ABOVE ALL INSTINCT

Years ago, we stopped taking notes of what happens during the farming year, especially during the harvest.
We scrupulously study and analyse each present situation in the vineyard and in the cellar. We gather our sensations and observations, which end up in a mental ‘stockpot’, where memories, intuition, experiences, research, mistakes, and daily life mingle, with no apparent logic.

At the beginning of each harvest, that stockpot represents the chaos, entropy, and disorder of Badde Nigolosu..

You can become a slave to rationality, making you insecure to the point that you end up tasting hundreds of wines a year in the quest for certainty and security.
You will begin to feel the need for mental guidelines, and ultimately end up pursuing a model of wine that you have created for yourself in your ideal world. This often leads to standardization.

But as Saint Augustine taught us, time does not exist. As we savour the moment we are experiencing, it has already passed. When we work as artisans, using natural methods and processes, the variables are so numerous that if we tried to influence them, we would only create confusion.

It is like sailing without navigational aids in a stormy sea: you can only do it if you have the skills, experience, and professionalism.

Every day in your vineyard and in your cellar is unique, unrepeatable, without equal.

Each year is a new adventure and should be faced with a light touch, freedom of movement and freedom from conditioning.

Rationality leads to standardization. Instinct is craftsmanship.

RETAGLIADU NIEDDU GRAPES – Cannonau di Sorso Sennori

Cannonau is an ancient Sardinian native grape. Up to a few years ago, itwas believed to be simply another name for the French grape Grenache, theSpanish Garnacha, and th e Venetian Tocai Rosso. However, recent scientific studies highlighted two fundamental facts: 1) Cannonau andGrenache share only 82% genetic material (Università di Sassari, Nieddu etal.) 2) Cannonau existed in Sardinia bef ore it was present in the rest ofEurope. Among the many official documents attesting to this is a 1549declaration of Bernardino Coni of Cagliari that mentions Cannonau, while references to Garnacha, a Spanish red wine, start appearing only 2centuries later. For years, it was thought that Cannonau derived from Canonazo di Siv iglia, but th at turned out to be a mere spelling error forCanocazo, a white Andalusian grape. The first agronomist to mentionCannonau was Andrea Manca dell’Arca, of Sassari, in the late 1700s. Later,Cettolini wrote th at th e grape is known as Cannonatu in Tempio and asRetagliadu Nieddu in Sorso. All our Cannonau vineyards are in reality planted to Retagliadu Nieddu, the ancient clone of Cannonau of Romangia.

VERMENTINO GRAPES

Vermentino is officially registered in the Italian NationalWine Grape Registry with Carbesso, Favorita, andVerlantin as synonyms (Decree 25 May 1970) and includedin the list Varieties Recommended for Liguria, coastalTuscany, and Sardina. In his 1877 Ampelographic Bulletin,Cettolini reported that “a grapevine called Vermentino is cultivated at Tempio, which is supposed to be an import from Corsica.” Cara confirmed in 1909 its cultivation in the Gallura area and presumed its identity with Coscosedda di Sorso.

MOSCATO GRAPES

A grape with very ancient origins, Moscato was already in Sardinia in the time of the Romans, who gave it the name of Vitis Apiana because the sweetness of its berries was irresistible to bees. The name Moscato could likewise derive from the attractiveness of this sugar-laden grape to mosche, flies. Moscato is grown in almost all the viticultural areas of the Mediterranean basin; in Sardinia, we find it mainly in the limestone soils and sun-blest conditions of the Romangia. It is traditionally trained to the low-bush alberello style and the vineyards are managed to a low-crop level. These factors, combined with sunny expositions and cultivation in dry, limestone-rich soils, yield full-bodied, generous wines with expressive aromatics. The wine appears a gold-amber, while the aromas are those of the fragrant Moscato grape, which convey honey, almonds, fig, apricot preserves, and cooked grape must. It is exquisitely sweet, heady and warm, extraordinarily smooth and enfolding on the palate.

MONICA GRAPES

The first evidence in Sardinia of this variety, under the name Monaca, goes back to Acerbi, 1825, and Varese, 1832, but Moris had already introduced it in 1836 as“Vitis nectarea, Vern. Monica …vinum hujus nominis exquisitum, nectareum”. In the Romangia, Monica is known as Monica di Sorso, a clone quite different from the classic Monica of Sardinia.

PASCALE GRAPES

The first printed evidence for the Pascale in Sardinia is from Andrea Manca dell’Arca,who described it as having “fat, round berries and a large cluster.” An 1887Ampelographic Bulletin explains that the early-ripening Pascale Nero was cultivated in the province of Sassari, while Cettolini (1897) has it growing in various areas of the island, particularly around Sassari, as in the Romangia. The Pascale is also prized as a table grape, and it is often co-vinified with Cannonau.Tenute Dettori is the first producer to vinify and bottle Pascale as a monovarietal.

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