70 MAY 2019
THE SUN IS SETTING over Sardinia’s Costa Smeralda, and I’m
standing on the rocks at a trendy bar called Phi Beach, watching
a helicopter pull stunts over the ocean.
It zooms between yachts in perfect synchrony with Richard
Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” which is blasting from the
loudspeakers. Then it drops down from the pink-splashed sky
and parks itself at the bar. There’s a thundering applause from
the crowd as the bar’s owner steps out of the cockpit.
The scene couldn’t be a starker contrast to where I woke
up that morning—a quiet countryside village in southwestern
Sardinia. The landscape was spare, yet beautiful: bales of hay,
almond trees, the occasional shepherd leading flocks of sheep
through grassy pastures. I’d ended up there after convincing
my husband to go on a four-day road trip to explore the less-
traveled, more wine-centric parts of the island. Our itinerary
took us to gorgeous beaches along the eastern coast, and, when
we were tired of sun and water, to Sulcis, the rocky wine region
that produces some of Sardinia’s best-known reds.
In Cala Gonone, a seaside town in the Gulf of Orosei on the
eastern side of the island, you can rent rubber dinghies (no
boat license required) to explore miles of caves and secluded
beaches. The gulf is part of the stunning Gennargentu National
Park, which offers unparalleled hiking and rock-climbing
opportunities. Here, the impressively built SS125 highway
carves past forests of eucalyptus and juniper trees, mountains of
granite, and Gola di Gorropu, one of Europe’s deepest canyons.
From there we explored the sand dunes around Pula, a lively
coastal town in the south, before arriving in wine country. It was
drizzling as we pulled into the driveway of Cantina Santadi, one
of the island’s top wineries. The 2018 harvest was well underway,
and piles of grapes were coming in by the truckload.
More than 200 farmers supply grapes to Santadi. For years
the winemaking here was overseen by Giacomo Tachis, the
man who introduced the world to Super Tuscans. The driv-
ing force behind Tignanello, Solaia, and Sassicaia, he also
helped develop Sardinia’s first iconic reds: Santadi’s richly
Sardinia
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flavorful Terre Brune Carignano del Sulcis Superiore and Argiolas’
Turriga, a formidable Cannonau-based blend.
In the Sulcis region, the vineyards are so sandy that
phylloxera, the root louse that destroyed most of Europe’s vines
in the late 1800s, never arrived here (it hates sand)—and as a
result, it’s easy to come across acres of vines that are now more
than 100 years old. The red wines they make tend to be big and
bold, full of dark berries and a distinct herbal note that gives
them away as Sardinian—likely the influence of the mastic trees
and myrtle bushes that grow near the vineyards. For me and my
husband, that means they ask for the island’s traditional dish,
porcheddu, suckling pig pit-roasted on myrtle branches. It’s a
combination that reveals in its intense flavors the very wildness
that makes Sardinia so enchanting. —NICOLE DRUMMER LOC
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