Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Sliced green apples, lime zest, grapefruits and guavas on the nose. It’s fruity and flavorful, with a medium to full body and bright acidity too. Tropical fruit notes evolve to a dry minerality. Drink now.
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Vinous
The 2021 Vermentino di Sardegna is Argiolas is classy, opening with a richly enticing bouquet as lemon curds and sweet smoke blow off to reveal pure peach. This is silky and refined with tantalizing acidity and tactile mineral tones that enhance its tropical melon and crunchy green apple core. The palate is left saturated with primary concentration as the 2021 finishes youthfully tense, long and with a salty flourish. The Is Argiolas is fantastic and has a balance that will promote medium-term cellaring.
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Wine Spectator
A mouthwatering white, well-knit and light- to medium-bodied, this is lightly fleshy in texture and displays a well-spiced range of blood orange, nectarine and strawberry fruit flavors, plus accents of grated ginger, oyster shell and verbena.
A fantastic, aromatic white grape that grows with great success in Sardinia, Tuscany and in lesser proportions on the island of Corsica. Somm Secret—Vermentino is thought to be genetically identical to Liguria’s Pigato grape and Peidmont’s Favorita. It comprises a large proportion of the whites in southern France where it is called Rolle.
Hailed for centuries as a Mediterranean vine-growing paradise, multiple cultures over many centuries have ruled the large island of Sardinia. Set in the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Phonoecians, Ancient Rome, and subsequently the Byzantines, Arabs and Catalans have all staked a claim on the island at some point in history. Along the way, these inhabitants transported many of their homeland’s prized vines and today Sardinia’s modern-day indigenous grape varieties claim multiple origins. Sardinia’s most important red grapes—namely Cannonau (a synonym for Grenache) and Carignan—are actually of Spanish origin.
Vermentino, a prolific Mediterranean variety, is the island’s star white. Vermentino has a stronghold the Languedoc region of France as well as Italy’s western and coastal regions, namely Liguria (where it is called Pigato), Piedmont (where it is called Favorita) and in Tuscany, where it goes by the name, Vermentino. The best Vermentino, in arguably all of the Mediterranean, grows in Sardinia's northeastern region of Gallura where its vines struggle to dig roots deep down into north-facing slopes of granitic soils. These Vermentino vines produce highly aromatic, full and concentrated whites of unparalleled balance.
Today aside from its dedication to viticulture, Sardinia remains committed to maintaining its natural farmlands, bucolic plains of grazing sheep and perhaps most of all, its sandy, sunny, Mediterranean beaches.