{"title":"Cardedu","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen we talk about Mediterranean wine, it’s usually Sicily this, Corsica that. But Sardinia? We all really need to spend more time exploring the island. It’s just as rugged, just as beautiful, and just as deeply tied to tradition. It’s also home to some of the tastiest and most soulful wines in Italy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor about a decade now, one of our favorite producers from Sardinia has been Cardedu. This is a family winery in the wild, mountainous southeast of the island, where the sea is never very far, the roads are never particularly safe, and the vineyards have been quietly aging for multiple generations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCardedu farms those vineyards organically and makes wine the old-school way, with native yeast fermentations and aging in large cement tanks from the 1950s. Really, not much has changed here for decades.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe love the variety of grape varieties that Sardinia offers. Most of us have heard of Vermentino and enjoyed samples from nearby Corsica or Liguria. Cardedu’s “Nuo” feels like a halfway point between Corsica’s full-bodied version of the grape and Liguria’s saltier, seaside take. Apparently that’s what you get when you grow this grape in crumbling granite soils high up in Sardinia’s mountains.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Praja” is made from Monica, perhaps the most distinctly Sardinian grape in the lineup, as it is a variety that is grown nowhere else on Earth. This one is pure Sardinia: light on its feet, a little herbal, a little wild. It’s a versatile, juicy red wine that you can pair with meat or — slightly chilled — with a plate of fish.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCannonau may be the island’s signature grape. Long thought to be just the local name for Grenache, we now know that it is, rather, a close relative. It’s less overtly fruity than a Southern Rhône Grenache, with more meaty, savory, smoky notes. For anyone who has been getting into Grenache via the lighter high-altitude versions from Spain, this is yet another example of the tremendous versatility of this wonderful family of grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese are the kinds of wines that, as little as 20 years ago, you just couldn’t buy in America. Tourists would return from their Sardinian vacations marveling at the terrific valued wine they could find there. We are so happy that we can buy them today.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[],"url":"https:\/\/sf.flatiron-wines.com\/collections\/cardedu.oembed","provider":"Flatiron SF","version":"1.0","type":"link"}