Sella&Mosca winery tour.
This tour takes place in the afternoon only, all days except Sundayya
We recommend this tour when visiting the town of Alghero.
Engineer Sella and lawyer Mosca visited Sardinia in 1899. Unexpectedly, they found empty land near the town of Alghero that was ideal for winemaking. The Sardinian scenery appealed to them so much that they dropped everything and bought the land. Today, more than 100 years later, the winery’s logo is a reminder of the antiquity of the winemaking culture. It depicts a fragment of a winemaking scene from the Egyptian tomb of Mereruk in Saqqara. The cure for phylloxera.
The largest grape nursery in Europe was soon established here, covering an area of 650 hectares and providing vines for the whole of Europe for many years.
In 1899, the future winery was a real virgin land: stony and deserted. But by 1903 the stony soil had been excavated and there were vineyards, a winery and houses for the workers. Gradually, a village was formed around the winery with dwellings, a primary school and even a church. The villagers were fully autonomous and self-sufficient in grain and fruit. This is also when the cellars appeared, which the winery still uses today. Today it is the largest and oldest winery in Sardinia. The Gambero Rosso Wine Guide named Sella&Mosca the best Italian winery in 2013.
In the 1950s, the company stopped farming vines but continued to make wine. Although Sella&Mosca is Sardinia’s largest winery, it still uses only its own grapes. All the vines are cultivated organically. The varieties grown here range from French Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc to local Cannonau and Vermentino. It was Sella&Mosca that once preserved and restored the Torbato variety. This variety used to be grown in the south of France, but because of its low yields, it was gradually replaced by other, higher-yielding varieties. The company rescued the rare autochthonous variety and now it grows mainly in the north of Sardinia.
Sardinia is not an easy place to grow grapes. There is very little rainfall, so the winery Sella&Mosca had to pioneer and create an irrigation system. This allows them to get a good harvest even in the driest years, which is especially important for the flavour of white grapes. In fact, Sella&Mosca changed the local land, as there were no vineyards here before. This is why the appellation
DOC Alghero, which was created in 1995, came about thanks to the winery.
