Why it matters
The producer
Sella & Mosca occupies 520 hectares of vineyards on the Nurra plain at Alghero, in the northwestern corner of Sardinia. It is the largest wine producer on the island. The names on the label belong to two men from Piedmont, an engineer and a lawyer, who arrived in 1899 with no local wine tradition and a plain of uncultivated scrub in front of them. They reclaimed it, planted it, and built a self-contained workers' settlement that still stands inside the estate today.
The range runs from Sardinia's island-wide DOC categories to the more focused Alghero DOC, where the estate's prestige Cabernet Sauvignon and its indigenous Torbato white are both made. The estate has changed corporate hands twice in recent decades, passing from the Campari Group, which owned it from 2002, to the northern Italian wine group Terra Moretti in 2016.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Alghero sits on the northwestern coast of Sardinia, where the Nurra plain runs inland from the sea. The plain is flat, open, and exposed to maritime breezes from the Mediterranean, which moderate temperature and slow ripening across the 520-hectare vineyard block. Soils on the estate are calcareous, clayey, and sandy, with a naturally high iron content. The combination produces wines with firm underlying mineral character and enough freshness to carry both Vermentino and Cabernet Sauvignon without either variety going soft.
The Alghero DOC, approved in 1995 and protected by a consortium founded in 2007, covers a broad range of grape varieties unusual for Sardinia: it permits not only native grapes but also international varieties including Cabernet Sauvignon, which is how Marchese di Villamarina qualifies as a DOC wine on the island.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The estate farms its own 520 hectares at Alghero and has holdings in Sulcis. The Alghero block is planted to Vermentino, Torbato, Cannonau, and Cabernet Sauvignon, among other varieties.
For Cala Reale Vermentino, the cellar uses cold maceration before fermentation, then raises the wine on fine lees in stainless steel. The fine-lees contact builds texture and saline depth without adding oak character. For Marchese di Villamarina, the approach is the opposite: extended skin contact during fermentation, then approximately 18 months in barriques, followed by further bottle maturation before release. The oak programme is long enough to integrate tannin and add secondary complexity without overwhelming the variety's natural cherry and blackberry fruit. Cannonau Riserva is also aged before release, building the rounded mid-palate that the variety produces on Sardinian soils.
Wines to know
The range in view
The range divides along two axes: grape origin and appellation level.
Vermentino is the most commercially active white. Cala Reale, made entirely from Vermentino, opens with Mediterranean herbs, white flowers, and citrus, with a saline finish that comes from the maritime terroir and fine-lees ageing. Anemone, in the TINTAS entry range, shows violet and cherry notes in a lively, playful wine. The two bottles sit at different price and complexity levels but share the same variety and the same coastal freshness.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with Cala Reale Vermentino. It is 100 percent Vermentino, cold-macerated and raised on fine lees in steel with no oak, and it puts the Alghero maritime terroir directly in the glass. The saline freshness, the herb and white flower lift, the clean acidity: all of it comes from this particular combination of iron-rich soils, coastal breezes, and a cellar approach designed to preserve rather than transform.