Club Med

The Mediterranean doesn’t really require an introduction. (A spell check, definitely - but no intro.) We’re all probably at least a little familiar with the sea at the center of so much human history, culture, cuisine, leisure, and conflict already. Lots of important stuff has been happening there all the time since the dawn of time; we don’t have the time to get into most of it now. Even given our red wine-specific remit, the Med, in all its multi-continental viticultural fecundity, is way too teeming to cover in only three bottles. So this quarter we are sticking to just the interstices, the brown and green smudges perforating all that ceaseless blueness on maps, photos and IRL. The Islands. 

There are a bunch, as you’d expect. More than 10,000 in total, amongst  which are two sovereign states (Malta and Cyprus), many nations, and plenty of wine. The most conspicuous in almost all regards  - the largest by size, population, and wine production - is Sicily. Too vast and variegated to share the spotlight, our visit there will have to wait for another time. That leaves only the approximately 2,127 islands larger than .01km to choose from. Most of them don’t produce any wine of course, but are nonetheless fascinating to discover.*  

We are focusing here on three you’ve probably heard of however: Sardinia, Corsica and Mallorca. The 2nd, 4th and 7th, largest islands by area in the sea, respectively, they all officially belong to different mainland European countries (Italy, France, Spain),  but remain fiercely protective of their own cultures and traditions. And this makes for very interesting wine scenes. Each possesses awesome indigenous varietals, unique local terroir, and hundreds if not thousands of years of viticultural know-how to draw from, alongside the  influence  of all the visitors/invaders that have made landfall over the centuries. No wine region - even the actual islands - is a metaphorical island, and that tension between isolation and accessibility is one of the things that make these wines in particular so singular and rewarding. 

First up is Sardinia, runner-up to Sicily in terms of both size and population, but responsible for a whopping 80% of Italy’s cork production. Located 150 miles off the west coast of the Apennine Peninsula, flaunting white sand beaches and alpine forests, and stretching across mountains, hills and plains, Sardinia is 9,300 square miles of such manifold ecological and topographical plenty that it's been called an island that’s almost a continent. Consequently, numerous foreign invaders have tried to conquer it over the years. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Saracens, Spanish, French and Italians all made attempts, and the landscape is dotted with evidence of the inhabitants' fierce resistance. There are some 7,000 ancient Nughari, or Bronze Age dressed stone circular defense towers built by the Nugari civilization (and for which no parallel exists anywhere else in the world) all over the island. Even Italy, the last and most successful of these would-be hegemons, hasn’t found full acceptance: you can still find the slogan “Sardigna no est Italia”, which translates to “Sardinia is not Italy”, graffitied on many village and town walls. While Sardinian wines were much prized by the ancient Greeks and other bygone Mediterranean civilizations, they have not been held in high regard for most of modern history. This has changed significantly in the last few decades though, as dedicated local vintners focused on celebrating the local terroir and varietals with sustainable farming practices and low yields, resulting in some very high quality bottlings. Today, Sardinia has more DOC and IGT titles than Calabria and Basilicata combined, inclusive of one DOCG wine, 19 DOC zones and 15 IGT zones, despite having the lowest wine production per acre of any Italian wine region. There are some 120 indigenous varietals grown in Sardinia, but the vast majority of planting and production is given over to just two: the red Cannonau (which is genetically identical to Grenache) and the white Vermentino (also grown in Tuscany, France, where it is called Rolle, and increasingly, California.) 

Next comes Corsica, the fourth largest by area (sixth by population) and the most mountainous island in the Mediterranean. It was once ruled from Genoa before the French took over, just  in time for native son Napoleon Bonaparte to be born a French subject. But Corsica has always been a world of its own, with a viticultural tradition dating back thousands of years, featuring idiosyncratic microclimates and mostly indigenous varietals. For red wine, these are primarily: Sciaccarellu, an early budding varietal, light in color with naturally high alcohol that creates soft, spicy, easy to enjoy red bottlings; and Nielluccio, which was originally a Sangiovese clone brought by the Genoese in the 1200s. Nielluccio is the more important of the two, bringing power and noticeable tannins, color and acidity. Savory flavors of tomato leaf are present, along with a hint of dark cherries and dried herbs. Sciaccarello adds finesse and fleshiness as well as its characteristic violet aromas and red fruit flavors, seasoned with black pepper. These grapes, when blended like in our selection here, usually have a distinct herbal aroma, likened to the aromatic maquis scrub of the island, and similar to the French garrigue. 

Finally there is Mallorca, the largest of Spain’s Balearic islands, and almost synonymous in the popular imagination with beach partying revelers from the continent. While all the larger islands in the Mediterranean struggle to achieve a balance between the tourism that buoys the local economy and the local traditions it threatens, the problem is perhaps most visible here, where the permanent population is nine hundred seventy thousand, against some fourteen million visitors each year. Despite a long and proud winemaking tradition,  lately indigenous grape varieties have been uprooted and replaced with international plantings at investor-owned wineries. Vineyard land costs have soared, and luxury homes now stand in the place of old vineyards. The traditional polyculture that once defined the landscape has been paved over to make room for tennis courts.  Fortunately Tomeu Llabrés, our Mallorcan winemaker featured this quarter, embodies a very  obstinate resistance to this trend, producing lovely handmade wine from autochthonous Mallorcan grapes like Mantonegro, featured here.

Cheers, 

The PlumpJack Wine Team

 *Since you asked, my personal favorite/vacation goal is Asinara, whose name is Italian for “Donkey-Inhabited” (though it apparently domiciles a lone human resident per a recent census.) For years, the 52km island was an Italian Alcatraz of sorts, interning POWs during the First World War, and then some of Italy’s most notorious 20th Century criminals. Since 2002 it has been a national park, open to all visitors who wish to check out its  gorgeous beaches, scenic hikes and albino donkey population.